Boulez conducts Boulez

Boulez conducts Boulez

Boulez conducts Boulez
Our Price: $16.98
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy Used: from $9.50 (click here)
Category: Music CD
See more new music releases
Listen soundtracks from this album



(Click here)
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store

Music CD Cover

Composer: Pierre Boulez
Conductor: Pierre Boulez
Orchestra: Ensemble InterContemporain
Performer: Hilary Summers
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2005-03-08
Music Label: Deutsche Grammophon

Free Music Notes for Boulez conducts Boulez

Free Music Review: Boulez's most recent take on his 50s classic with two late works that show his immense growth as a composer
Hit: 4 Stars

This Deutsche Grammophon disc, released for the composer's 80th birthday year, features three ensemble works by Pierre Boulez, with one being what many see as his first masterpiece. The composer himself leads the Ensemble Intercontemporain in this IRCAM recording.

By the 1950s, Boulez had written a couple of oratios in a very Webernian vein and some fiendishly difficult solo piano works that took the twelve-tone method to complete bleep-bloop abstraction (but still captivating to avant-garde afficionados). In 1955 he unveiled "Le Marteau sans maitre" for alto and an ensemble that at the time must have seemed revolutionary. Besides unpitched percussion, there is alto flute, viola, guitar, vibraphone and xylorimba. All instruments are squarely in the middle range, but have a dazzling array of sonorities. The nine-movement piece is in three interlocked cycles, each based around a vocal movement where a poem by Rene Char is delivered by the alto (here Hilary Summers), but the vocals are delivered less as a clear text and more as an extension of the instrumental sound. This is a gorgeous and highly varied piece, sounding like a fusion of 1950s lounge styling meets Balinese gamelan music and the strumming of the Japanese koto with some weird pitch organization, and even people who don't normally dig serialism will find parts of it catchy. On this latest recording, Boulez takes it noticeably slower than before, but I don't feel the result is lethargic and ruins the piece like, for example, the DG 20/21 recording of "Pli selon pli".

Pierre Boulez's music changed greatly in the 1960s and 1970s. While he has always remained a staunch serialist, faster tempos and a powerful sense of drive were increasingly woved into his music. "Derive" for small ensemble (1984) is a good example of the late Boulez. Scored for flute, A clarinet, violin, cello, vibrophone, and piano, the piece "derives" its harmonies from a six-note chord E-flat, A, C, B, E, and D, which in a mixed French-German-English nomenclature represents the name of Swiss music patron Paul Sacher. The same basis is used in "Eclat" and in "Messagesquisse", and in all the results are quite different. Here, "Derive" reminds one of the work of Magnus Lindberg, obsessed with the constant production of gorgeous harmonies and only occasionally letting melody creep in. The piece exists in an older recording recently reissued by Warner's budget line Apex, but while the quality of the performances is even, I think this new recording on DG is much more "alive" than there.

Boulez wrote "Derive 2" (2002) shows the influence of Carter and the late Ligeti, composers who wrote music of rhythmic ingenuity where each instrument is its own character. Each motion by one performer seems to spur another one on, and things quickly get quite complex, though with suprisingly gestalts and even a feel of allusion to tonality. One regrets that this recording is not the definitive take on the piece, for shortly after recording this Boulez premiered a new version which closes with a bold horn line that some critics have called Boulez's first real ending.

The liner notes are somewhat informative, but it is a real shame that they left out the figure in the old CBS recording's note, showing the relationships between the instruments in "Le Marteau" to explain why Boulez chose his unusual ensemble for that piece. Certainly anyone with some music theory, however limited, would be more satisfied with Dominique Jameaux's Pierre Boulez which describes all his pieces up to "Repons".

I think the best of recent Boulez is "...explosante-fixe..." and "Sur Incises", and that's why I give this disc with "Derive" and "Derive 2" only four stars, as they seem somewhat minor works, though still quite entertaining. Nonetheless, fans of 20th century music would do well to get a recording of "Le Marteau", either this one or the old CBS one (reissued on Sony).

Classical Music CDs

Music Genres
Top music charts in Best music from the second half of the twentieth century
Schwankungen Am Rand ImageSchwankungen Am Rand
Release date: 2002-11-05; Music CD
Best price: $27.67
Gy?rgy Ligeti Edition 1: String Quartets and Duets - Arditti String Quartet ImageGy?rgy Ligeti Edition 1: String Quartets and Duets - Arditti String Quartet
Release date: 1997-01-21; Music CD
Best price: $6.73
Price in other shops: $11.98
Luciano Berio: The String Quartets ImageArditti String Quartet, Luciano Berio - Luciano Berio: The String Quartets
Release date: 2003-01-14; Music CD
Price in other shops: $17.98
Schnittke: Cello Concerto No.2; In Memoriam ImageSchnittke: Cello Concerto No.2; In Memoriam
Release date: 1992-06-02; Music CD
Best price: $7.77
Price in other shops: $11.98
Schnittke: Symphony No.7/Cello Concerto No.1 ImageSchnittke: Symphony No.7/ Cello Concerto No.1
Release date: 2000-08-22; Music CD
Best price: $12.56
Price in other shops: $18.98
Elliott Carter: Piano Concerto; Concerto for Orchestra; Concerto for Orchestra; Three Occasions ImageElliott Carter: Piano Concerto; Concerto for Orchestra; Concerto for Orchestra; Three Occasions
Release date: 2005-06-14; Music CD
Best price: $2.88
Price in other shops: $6.98
Pierre Boulez: Rituel / Eclat / Multiples - Ensemble InterContemporain / BBC Symphony Orchestra ImagePierre Boulez: Rituel / Eclat / Multiples - Ensemble InterContemporain / BBC Symphony Orchestra
Release date: 1991-01-14; Music CD
Best price: $5.39
Price in other shops: $9.98
The Essential Lutoslawski ImageThe Essential Lutoslawski
Release date: 2000-01-11; Music CD
Best price: $12.69
Price in other shops: $17.98
Gy?rgy Kurt?g: Signs, Games and Messages ImageGy?rgy Kurt?g: Signs, Games and Messages
Release date: 2003-07-22; Music CD
Best price: $7.18
Price in other shops: $17.98
Saariaho: Private Gardens / Dawn Upshaw ImageSaariaho: Private Gardens / Dawn Upshaw
Release date: 1998-02-17; Music CD
Best price: $17.98
Top Rated Albums
Pierre Boulez: R?pons / Dialogue de l'Ombre Double (20/21 series) ImagePierre Boulez: R?pons / Dialogue de l'Ombre Double (20/ 21 series)
Release date: 1999-04-13; Music CD
Best price: $15.43
Price in other shops: $19.98
The Ligeti Project II: Lontano / Atmosph?res / Apparitions / San Francisco Polyphony / Concert Rom?nesc - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Jonathan Nott ImageThe Ligeti Project II: Lontano / Atmosph?res / Apparitions / San Francisco Polyphony / Concert Rom?nesc - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Jonathan Nott
Release date: 2002-06-11; Music CD
Best price: $10.83
Price in other shops: $16.98
Gy?rgy Ligeti Edition 3: Works for Piano (Etudes, Musica Ricercata) - Pierre-Laurent Aimard ImageGy?rgy Ligeti Edition 3: Works for Piano (Etudes, Musica Ricercata) - Pierre-Laurent Aimard
Release date: 1997-01-21; Music CD
Best price: $6.65
Price in other shops: $11.98
Pierre Boulez: Rituel / Eclat / Multiples - Ensemble InterContemporain / BBC Symphony Orchestra ImagePierre Boulez: Rituel / Eclat / Multiples - Ensemble InterContemporain / BBC Symphony Orchestra
Release date: 1991-01-14; Music CD
Best price: $5.33
Price in other shops: $9.98
Boulez: Sur Incises; Messagesquisse; Anth?mes 2 ImageBoulez: Sur Incises; Messagesquisse; Anth?mes 2
Release date: 2007-06-12; Music CD
Best price: $6.98
Price in other shops: $11.98
Olivier Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time ImageOlivier Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time
Release date: 1989-08-11; Music CD
Best price: $6.85
Price in other shops: $10.98
Complete Webern ImageComplete Webern
Release date: 2000-05-09; Music CD
Best price: $54.98
Price in other shops: $71.98
Boulez: The Three Piano Sonatas ImageBoulez: The Three Piano Sonatas
Release date: 2005-02-08; Music CD
Best price: $11.59
Price in other shops: $16.98
The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century ImageThe Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
by Alex Ross
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2007-10-16; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $18.71
Price in other shops: $30.00
Boulez: ...Explosante-fixe... ImageBoulez: ...Explosante-fixe...
Release date: 2005-02-08; Music CD
Best price: $9.98
Price in other shops: $16.98
Compare prices and find music notes for more than one million Music CD titles