My Music with Ruth Mackenzie
The new Artistic Director of the Adelaide Festival recalls singing in Britten’s children’s choir, playing the French horn, and becoming a fan of Boulez.
The new Artistic Director of the Adelaide Festival recalls singing in Britten’s children’s choir, playing the French horn, and becoming a fan of Boulez.
Why Finnish concert pianist Paavali Jumppanen was drawn to ANAM.
Celebrating the German composer whose farsighted innovations forever changed our approaches to composing and listening.
The Dutch composer and musical agitator, whose music crossed boundaries, has passed aged 82.
Sony reissues the Finn in full, plus birthday boy Bernstein comes complete on DG.
Why we need to be vigilantly aware of the implications of short-sighted cuts to investment in the arts.
The Chief Conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra shares his experiences of the great composer and conductor. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in
Beware opening doors to a dark soul within, says our critic of a Boulez-Bartók marriage. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in
Decca and Erato revisit the works and early recordings of the recently departed French nonagenarian. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in
The French contemporary music titan has passed away at his home in Baden-Baden, aged 90.
★★★★☆ Pierre Boulez turned 90 on March 26 this year, and several reissues have already appeared to commemorate the occasion. This set collects together his DG recordings of basic 20th-century repertoire: primarily Bartók, Stravinsky, Debussy, Ravel, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, as well as his own music. Boulez first recorded almost all this music for Sony (CBS) in the 1960s and 70s. In the ‘90s he signed with DG and began again. While his later recordings are polished, better recorded, and extremely well played, I mostly prefer the earlier set. In 1966, when Boulez made his first controversial disc of La Mer, he was still a rebel and regarded Debussy as revolutionary. An edgy, analytical performance resulted, but in this one with the Cleveland Orchestra from 1991 all discoveries have been made. Sony issued a box of their Boulez recordings, reviewed here recently by Philip Clark, where the repertoire is quirkier and more diverse. In the new box, for example, we have no Pelléas et Mélisande or Berg Violin Concerto, no Berio, Elliott Carter, Manuel de Falla, nor Boulez’s orchestral masterwork Rituel. We get Stravinsky’s Ebony Concerto but not Pulcinella. The Sony box reproduced the original LP covers, whereas Universal settles for…
Anyone who still considers Pierre Boulez to be a threat or a dangerous malcontent – where to put those obligatory mentions of torching opera houses and valueless tonal music? here will do – might be pleasantly surprised at the playlist served up by this box of Boulez’s complete recordings for Columbia Records. Berlioz, Mahler, Debussy, Stravinsky, Ravel, Bartók and Wagner are the dominant narrative. The occasional disc of music by Elliott Carter, Luciano Berio and Boulez himself oblige us to play plink-plonk; but even these apparently unwelcome brushes with the avant-garde get offset by a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and discs of Handel Water and Fireworks Music. And as he prepares to celebrate his 90th birthday in 2015, the most dangerous truth of all is revealed. Boulez was an insider all along, who, unlike his frenemy John Cage, has always viewed progress as an embedded part of, and never an alternative to, tradition. That said, admire Boulez as I do, as a Beethoven conductor, he ain’t no great shakes. A plodding, micro-managed Fifth Symphony plays the notes but utterly misses the music. His Handel, though, is rhythmically assertive and detailed. Makes you wish Boulez had recorded some Bach. The…
The world’s most influential living composer turns 90-years-old today.