Pierre Boulez 2013The Complete Works
Notations101. 01. Fantasque - Modéré
102. 02. Très vif
103. 03. Assez lent
104. 04. Rythmique
105. 05. Doux et improvisé
106. 06. Rapide
107. 07. Hiératique
108. 08. Modéré jusqu'à très vif
109. 09. Lointain - Calme
110. 10. Mécanique er très sec
111. 11. Scintillant
112. 12. Lent - Puissant et âpre
Pierre-Laurent Aimar113.
Sonatine For Flute And Piano Sophie Cherrier, Pierre-Laurent AimardPiano Sonata No.1114. 01. Lent - Beaucoup plus allant
115. 02. Assez large - Rapide
Pierre-Laurent AimardLe Visage Nuptial, 3è Version116. Conduite
Le Visage Nuptial, 3è Version117. Gravité (L'emmuré)
Le Visage Nuptial, 3è Version118. Le Visage Nuptial
Le Visage Nuptial, 3è Version119. Evadné
Le Visage Nuptial, 3è Version120. Post-Scriptum
Pierre Boulez, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers, Phyllis Bryn-Julson, Elizabeth LaurencePiano Sonata No.2201. 01. Extrèmement rapide
202. 02. Lent
203. 03. Modéré, presque vif
204. 04. Vif
Maurizio PolliniLivre pour quatuor, version 1962205. I a
Livre pour quatuor, version 1962206. I b
Livre pour quatuor, version 1962207. II
Livre pour quatuor, version 1962208. III a
Livre pour quatuor, version 1962209. III b
Livre pour quatuor, version 1962210. III c
Livre pour quatuor, version 1962211. V
Livre pour quatuor, version 1962212. VI
Quatuor ParisiiStructures, Livre 1 Pour 2 Pianos301. 1.
Structures, Livre 1 Pour 2 Pianos302. 2.
Structures, Livre 1 Pour 2 Pianos303. 3.
Aloys Kontarsky, Alfons KontarskyLe Soleil des eaux, 4è version304. Complainte du lézard amoureux
Le Soleil des eaux, 4è version305. La Sorgue (Chanson pour Yvonne)
Pierre Boulez, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers, Phyllis Bryn-JulsonLe Marteau sans Maître306. Avant "l'Artisanat furieux"
307. Commentaire I de "Bourreaux de solitude"
308. "L'Artisanat furieux"
309. Commentaire II de "Bourreaux de solitude"
310. "Bel édifice et les pressentiments" version première
311. "Bourreaux de solitude"
312. Après "L'Artisanat furieux"
313. Commentaire III de "Bourreaux de solitude"
314. "Bel édifice et les pressentiments", double
Hilary Summers, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Pierre BoulezPli selon Pli (1957-62/84/89) Portrait de Mallarmé401. No. 1 Don (version nouvelle 1989) [Je t'apporte l'enfant d'une nuit d'Idumée"
402. No. 2 Improvisation I sur Mallarmé (1958/62) le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui
403. No. 3 Improvisation II sur Mallarmé (1957) une dentelle s'abolit
404. No. 4 Improvisation III sur Mallarmé (1959/84) à la nue accablante tu
405. No. 5 Tombeau (1959-62) ["une peu profond ruisseau calomnié la mort"]
Christine Schäfer, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Pierre BoulezPiano Sonata No.3Formant 2 - Trope501. Parenthèse
502. Glose
503. Commentaire
504. Texte
Formant 3 - Miroir505. Mélange
506. Points 3
507. Blocs II
508. Points 2
509. Blocs I
510. Points 1
Paavali JumppanenStructures pour deux pianos - Livre II511. Chapitre I
512. Chapitre II (Pièces 1-2, Encarts 1-4, Textes 1-6)
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Florent Boffard513.
Figures, Doubles, Prismes, 2ème version 1968 Pierre Boulez, BBC Symphony OrchestraEclat - Multiples601. Eclat, pour quinze instruments
Eclat - Multiples602. Multiples, pour vingt-cinq instruments (inachevé)
Pierre Boulez, Ensemble Intercontemporain603.
Domaines Alain DamiensDomaines pour clarinette et groupes instrumentaux604. Première partie
Domaines pour clarinette et groupes instrumentaux605. Deuxième partie
Diego Masson, Musique Vivante, Michel Portal606.
Improvisé - Pour le Dr Kalmus Emmanuelle Ophele, Alain Billard, Sébastien Vichard, Odile Auboin, Eric Maria Couturier701.
Cummings ist der Dichter, 2è version 1986 Pierre Boulez, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers702.
Livre pour cordesPierre Boulez, Orchestre Philharmonique De Vienne703.
Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna Pierre Boulez, BBC Symphony OrchestraMessagequisse (1976/77) pour violoncelle solo et six violoncelles704. Très lent - ciff.1
705. Très rapide - ciff.4
706. Sans tempo libre - ciff.8
707. Aussi rapide que possible - ciff.10
Jean-Guihen Queyras, Ensemble De Violoncelles De Paris, Pierre BoulezNotations708. 1. Fantasque - Modéré
709. 7. Hiératique
710. 4. Rythmique
711. 3. Très modéré
712. 2. Très vif
Pierre Boulez, Ensemble Modern Orchestra713.
Memoriale ( explosante fixe . Originel) Pierre Boulez, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Sophie Cherrier801.
... explosante-fixe ...Sophie Cherrier, Emmanuelle Ophele, Pierre Andre Valade, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Pierre Boulez802.
Anthèmes I Jeanne-Marie ConquerAnthèmes 2 (1997) pour violon et dispositif électronique803. Lent - /I Libre
804. 1. Très lent - I/II Libre
805. 2. Rapide, dynamique - II/III Libre
806. 3. Lent - III/IV Libre
807. 4. Agité - IV/V Libre
808. 5. Trés lent - V/VI Libre
809. VI-1 Allant
810. VI-2 Calme, régulier
811. VI-3 Calme
Hae-Sun Kang, Andrew GerzsoRépons (1981 - 1984)901. Introduction
Ensemble Intercontemporain, Pierre Boulez902. Section 1
903. Section 2
904. Section 3
Andrew Gerzso, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Pierre Boulez905. Section 4
Ensemble Intercontemporain, Pierre Boulez, Andrew Gerzso906. Section 5
Andrew Gerzso, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Pierre Boulez907. Section 6
Ensemble Intercontemporain, Pierre Boulez, Andrew Gerzso908. Section 7
909. Section 8
910. Coda
Andrew Gerzso, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Pierre BoulezDialogue de l'ombre double (1985)911. Sigle initial
912. Strophe I
913. Transition I à II
914. Strophe II
915. Transition II à III
916. Strophe III
917. Transition III à IV
918. Strophe IV
919. Transition IV à V
920. Strophe V
921. Transition V à VI
922. Strophe VI
923. Sigle final
Alain Damiens, Andrew Gerzso1001.
Dérive 1Ensemble Intercontemporain, Pierre Boulez1002.
Dérive 2 Pierre Boulez, Ensemble Intercontemporain1101.
Incises Dimitri VassilakisSur Incises (1996/1998) pour trois pianos, trois harp, trois percussion-claviers1102. Moment I
1103. Moment II Track at ciff.1 of part II
Dimitri Vassilakis, Hideki Nagano, Florent Boffard, Frédérique Cambreling, Sandrine Chatron, Marianne Le Mentec, Vincent Bauer, Daniel Ciampolini, Michel Cerutti, Pierre Boulez1104.
Une page d'éphémerideHideki NaganoLe Marteau sans Maître1201. "L'Artisanat furieux"
1202. "Bourreaux de solitude"
1203. "L'Artisanat furieux"
1204. Commentaire II de "Bourreaux de solitude"
1205. "Bel édifice et les pressentiments" version première
1206. Commentaire III de "Bourreaux de solitude"
1207. Avant "l'Artisanat furieux"
1208. Commentaire III de "Bourreaux de solitude"
1209. "Bel édifice et les pressentiments", double
Jeanne Deroubaix, Solistes du Domaine Musical, Pierre BoulezLe Soleil des eaux, 2è version1210. Complainte du lézard amoureux
Roger Desormière, Choeur de la RTF, Orchestre National de la RTFLe Soleil des eaux, 2è version1211. La Sorgue (Chanson pour Yvonne)
Roger Desormière, Choeur de la RTF, Orchestre National de la RTF, Irène Joachim, Joseph Peyron, Pierre Mollet1212.
Sonatine Pour Flûte Et PianoSeverino Gazzelloni, David Tudor1301. Interview de Pierre Boulez (par Claude Samuel) - Partie 1
1302. Interview de Pierre Boulez (par Claude Samuel) - Partie 2
1303. Interview de Pierre Boulez (par Claude Samuel) - Partie 3
1304. Interview de Pierre Boulez (par Claude Samuel) - Partie 4
1305. Interview de Pierre Boulez (par Claude Samuel) - Partie 5
1306. Interview de Pierre Boulez (par Claude Samuel) - Partie 6
Pierre Boulez
Boulez, the son of a steel manufacturer, majored in mathematics at the Collège de Saint-Étienne, where he also took music lessons; he later studied mathematics, engineering, and music in Lyon. In 1944–45 he was taught by the composer and organist Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatory. Subsequently (1945–46), he was trained in 12-tone technique by René Leibowitz, who had been a student of Arnold Schoenberg, the father of 12-tone music. In 1953 Boulez founded a series of avant-garde concerts, the Concerts of Petit-Marigny, which were later renamed Domaine Musical.
By the 1960s Boulez had gained an international reputation not only as a composer but also as a conductor, particularly of the 20th-century repertoire. He began his first conducting post in 1958 with the Southwest Radio Symphony Orchestra in Baden-Baden, West Germany. He was principal guest conductor and then musical adviser of the Cleveland Orchestra (1969–72) and principal conductor of both the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London (1971–75) and the New York Philharmonic (1971–77). In the 1960s and ’70s he also conducted works of Richard Wagner at Bayreuth, West Germany. Boulez conducted with major orchestras in the United States and Europe, including the Chicago Symphony, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestras. He became known especially for performances of Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Anton Webern, Maurice Ravel, and Igor Stravinsky. According to the American composer John Adams, “The precision of his performances and his recordings had a huge effect on following generations of conductors and performers.”
In the mid-1970s, with the support of the French government, Boulez created and directed the experimental Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM), which was housed in the Pompidou Centre in Paris. The instrumental group he established there in 1976, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, became one of the world’s most important contemporary music ensembles; Boulez toured with the group as its conductor until 1992 and continued as president thereafter.
Boulez’s complex, serialist music is marked by a sensitivity to the nuances of instrumental texture and colour, a concern also apparent in his conducting. His earlier compositions combine the influence of the 12-tone composers with that of Messiaen and, through him, of certain East Asian musical elements. Boulez was also influenced by the work of the poets Stéphane Mallarmé and René Char. In his Sonatine for flute and piano (1946), the 12-tone imitations and canons progress so quickly as to leave an impression merely of movement and texture. In Structures, Book I for two pianos (1952), the actual 12-tone series is simply taken from a work of Messiaen’s; but Boulez elaborates it to a remarkable degree in strict permutations of pitch, duration, and dynamics. Le Marteau sans maître for voice and six instruments (1953–55; The Hammer Without a Master) has florid decorative textures that flow into one another, with voice and instruments rising and falling with apparent spontaneity.
Boulez’s innovativeness was demonstrated in Pli selon pli (1957–62; Fold According to Fold), in which performers must orient themselves by maintaining a constant awareness of the structure of the work. In his Piano Sonata No. 3 (first performed 1957), as in Pli selon pli, he introduced elements of aleatory music.
Boulez’s other works include Le Visage nuptial for two voices, women’s chorus, and orchestra (1951–52, based on the chamber version of 1947; “The Bridal Countenance”); Poésie pour pouvoir for two orchestras (first performed 1958; “Poetry for Power”); Répons for chamber orchestra, six solo instruments, and computer (first performed 1981); and “…explosante-fixe…” (1972–93, several versions), for which Boulez used live electronics for all but the earliest version. He continued to compose into the 21st century, at times taking a leave from conducting to focus on his own music. He said, “I write in different levels at once—one level is simple, which gives you confidence, others are complex, which invite you to explore.”
Autobiographical works by Boulez include Relevés d’apprenti (1966; Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship), and Par volonté et par hasard (1975; Conversations with Célestin Deliège). More-theoretical writings include Penser la musique aujourd’hui (1964; Boulez on Music Today) and Points de repère (1981; Orientations). His approach to conducting is the focus of Boulez on Conducting: Conversations with Cécile Gilly (2003). Some of his letters, translated and edited by Robert Samuels, are collected in Pierre Boulez and John Cage Correspondence (1993; originally published in French, 1990).
Boulez’s many international honours included the Praemium Imperiale (1989), the Wolf Prize (2000), and the Kyoto Prize (2009). Recordings of performances that Boulez conducted won more than 20 Grammy Awards, and in 2015 he received a special Grammy for lifetime achievement. He also received high honours from the governments of Great Britain (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) and Germany (Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany).
More than anyone else’s, Pierre Boulez’s oeuvre has not known completion and never will. Doubtless like so many creators – and not the least important –, he undertakes projects that, without any particular explanation, he will not follow up on. In the ‘unfinished’ category, for instance, appears a score he had planned to write for Les Percussions de Strasbourg, of which we are mentioning the idea only for the record. But in an approach of which there are few equivalents in the history of music, Pierre Boulez considers each of his works like the exploitation of a material, from which arise, in the course of an unpredictable but carefully controlled proliferation of new compositions or, more precisely, new versions of a composition that, in the final analysis, and for a given, immeasurable time, will have been only the kernel of the final piece. This is less a matter of alterations, expressing doubts or regrets, reactions that are hardly Boulezian, than the pursuit of work that, even if resulting in public performances (and such has often been the case), preserves its potentialities, so many stages before – the material deemed exhausted– the recognition of paternity of a definitive piece at last.
The present set is therefore itself testimony to a particular compositional process, the inventory of a body in the process of edification, in which certain, perfectly closed opuses are inscribed, and at the highest level, in the repertoire of contemporary musical creation whereas others, already noticed by commentators, are relegated to a sort of antechamber, the exploration of which requires the greatest patience. This set also gives the idea of a shattered chronology, unlike the classic catalogue of a musician organizing the various pieces in his development one after another. Examples abound: thus Livre pour quatuor, for which Pierre Boulez imagined the succession of six movements back in 1948. A first, partial performance took place in 1955, and then, in this year 2012, he composed one of the missing movements. Detachable pages, in a way, for which Boulez took Mallarmé as a model. Consequently, the usage of this set, work by work in the hopes of detecting an itinerary, is totally utopian, except that the Boulezian corpus, albeit manifold, is homogeneous in its references, coherent through its different models, also progressive, from the rigours of an initial post-Webernian period up to the flexibility – fantasy? – of writing that is no less precise but somehow liberated.
Missing links? Boulez wants to turn over only finished works or parts of works to the public. The programme of this set reflects the Boulezian corpus as ‘work in progress’.
Finally, the recordings, chosen in agreement with the, composer attest to a real-time interpretation, if we might say so. Foundations of a tradition on which future generations will be able to nurture themselves without being condemned, for all that, to strict observance, which would contravene all that the Boulezian philosophy has taught us. The composer provides the example; his practice of conducting, his frequenting classical composers, his thinking about his own approach, the (relative) flexibility of his own scores, and the abilities of a new generation of performers commit him to new perspectives; beyond the word-byword of the notes: more flexibility, differentiation in sound and clarity. The confrontation of the two recordings of Le Marteau sans maître proposed in this set, recordings made some forty years apart, supply the proof. In this area, nothing is definitive. But now, in addition to the pleasure of listening, knowledge of such period documents is particularly enlightening. It stimulates the listener’s thinking as much as the commentator’s and indicates fruitful paths to performers that simple faithfulness to a tradition would be unable to satisfy.
‘Every work is ambiguous: attached to the past, oriented towards the future. What is important to me,’ says Boulez, ‘is its current contribution.’ A limited, but nonetheless demanding, ambition.
The box, with lift-off lid, is substantial in size, the booklet equally so, to respectively house and accompany this treasure-trove of Pierre Boulez’s “ŒUVRES COMPLÈTES”, an enticing 13-CD project supervised by the composer and superbly presented by Deutsche Grammophon (most of the recordings chosen are from the decades of the 1980s, 90s and 2000s, and some are borrowed from other companies). On the back of the box, however, is a phrase more associated with the great French composer and conductor: “WORK IN PROGRESS”. As anyone who has followed Boulez’s compositions will know, some of his works remain in a state of revision, if still performable, although others have been withdrawn, a reflection of his ongoing requirement for refining and perfecting certain pieces. What we have in this release is “complete” as deemed by Boulez as at the production stage of the set and thus carried forward to its release in June 2013, a considered self-portrait of a great music-experimenter, one of the most influential and charismatic musicians of his time, who at the age of 88 (he was born on 26 March 1925 in Montbrison) hopefully remains active and creative despite unfortunate current eye problems that have limited his conducting activities – recently he withdrew from two of weeks of Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts. With any luck, Boulez still has the resources to write the once-proposed violin concerto for Anne-Sophie Mutter and also to complete the orchestrations of his twelve Notations, originally for piano.
Pierre Boulez. Photograph: Harold Hoffmann/DG And it’s with that cycle that the first compact disc opens, the twelve miniatures for piano, each of twelve bars (the longest lasting two minutes with several playing for less than half that length) that Boulez composed in 1945. The concentrated pungency of the sequence embraces whimsical to aggressive, here brought off with total commitment by Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who reveals that each is a gem. Then there is the cool angularity and fluttering of the Sonatina for Flute and Piano (1946, Sophie Cherrier and Aimard) and the craggy explorations of the Piano Sonata No.1 (from the same year, Aimard again). The 30-minute La visage nuptial (originally from 1947, revised in 1952, withdrawn, and further revised in 1989 to definitive effect); to texts by René Char the score is luminous, voluptuous and thrilling, rather Bergian, and it’s a colossal achievement in this Erato recording with the composer conducting BBC forces in 1989. The second disc embraces Piano Sonata No.2, that masterpiece of the late-1940s. Maurizio Pollini’s account from 1978 has been chosen (there is a later one from another pianist in DG’s catalogue). From the arresting gesture that opens the explosive opening movement through to the work’s vaporous conclusion, Pollini is the total master of the Sonata’s many fluctuations of tempo and its volatile contrasts of mood. Pollini’s classic recording sounds quiet superb in the current re-mastering. Livre pour quatuor (1962 version) is a 40-minute cycle for string quartet in eight movements; tantalising music in its unpredictability and contrasts, cultivated and perfectly judged as performed by Quatuor Parisii on an Editions Assai release from 2001.
On CD 3 is the very combative Structures Livre I (1951) for two pianos with Alfons and Aloys Kontarsky, contrasted by the sensuous choral/orchestral (char again) Le Soleil des eaux (Fourth Version, 1965), glowing with expression, followed by one of the works that helped put Boulez on the map, and which has become a modern classic, the linear and crystalline Le Marteau sans maître, which seems to meld Debussy and Webern while setting Char’s surrealist prose. The composer conducts Ensemble Intercontemporain with Hilary Summers as the vocal soloist. CD 4 is devoted to the 70-minute Pli selon pli (1989 definitive version), Boulez’s Mallarmé-inspired masterpiece; its five movements first gathered together in 1960. From this work are the three ‘Improvisation sur Mallarmé’ that are sometimes played separately. From an arresting opening, the music’s pregnancy and sensuousness builds to irresistible iridescence – fragments, interjections, stillness and activity intertwining, not a note misplaced or seeming superfluous. The close of ‘Don (du poème)’ – Gift (of a Poem) – sets the stage to be picked up again in ‘Tombeau’ (Tomb), the finale, for the three ‘Improvisations sur Mallarmé’ each set a Mallarmé poem, Be it a swan trapped in ice, the colour white, or birth and death, Boulez matches the text with music of rapture, drama and variegation, whether cool and ravishing, beguiling or brittle, agitated and desolate, these three ‘Improvisations’ (ranging from five to twenty minutes in length) demand a soprano of very particular skills and empathy. Christine Schäfer is vocally fearless, every intimacy and exclamation perfectly judged.
Opening the fifth disc are the two parts of Piano Sonata No.3 (‘Trope’ / ‘Constellation-Miroir’), the only sections of a longer work that Boulez has allowed to be performed for all that it goes back to 1957. What we have is given fluid focus by Paavali Jumppanen is an incisive and dramatic reading. Structures, Livre II (1956/61) features Aimard and Florent Boffard in a quite recessed acoustic, the pianos widely spaced left and right for this antagonistic music. Boulez’s keen ear for detail and lucidity has never stopped him addressing a large symphony orchestra while always retaining his concern for clarity. We know his mastery as a conductor (holding posts with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and New York Philharmonic, and regular engagements over many decades with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the LSO and the orchestras of Chicago and Cleveland). Figures, Doubles, Prismes (1958/68) is often thrilling and exquisite, played here by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer on an Erato recording from 1980.
To open disc six are the explosions of Eclat-Multiples, for instrumental ensemble, music that glitters and contains many rhythmic intricacies. Then Alain Damiens’s predatory clarinet is heard – swooping, rasping, screaming, seducing – in Domaines, immediately followed by the expanded double-the-length (30 minutes) version of the same name, for clarinet (Michel Portal this time) now with instrumental groups. As an energetically enigmatic envoi to this CD is the two-minute Improvisé – pour le Dr Kalmus (the music publisher), for flute, clarinet, piano, viola and cello: compelling, whirling and swirling, a touching 80th-birthday present. On disc 7 is cummings ist der dichter (not the title Boulez intended!), an electrifying setting of the lower-case poet. Then Livre pour cordes (from 1968 if “still evolving”), an ecstatic and ravishing piece, the strings of the Vienna Philharmonic attending to every detail for the composer (in 1992). This is followed by Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna, a time-obsessed, spatial masterpiece of increasing complexity, composed by Boulez for his friend and fellow composer/conductor who died in 1973. Boulez’s BBCSO version for Sony Classical is chosen. Messagesquisse for solo cello and a group of six cellos is tantalising. Then comes the extravagant large orchestra of five of the Notations, the first four and VII, beautiful, thrilling and wonderful music, Boulez conducting Ensemble Modern Orchestra, after which comes the contrasted coolness of Memoriale (...explosante fixe... Originel) for solo flute and ensemble. This 80-minute disc is quite something.
Disc 8 includes the activity of <<...explosante-fixe...>> itself, quite remarkable, and then the 9-minute Anthèmes for solo violin (Jeanne-Marie Conquer) is heard extended, and enveloped in IRCAM-generated sounds, as Anthèmes II, this time with Hae-Sun Kang as the violinist. CD 9 includes Répons (1984) – pulsating, colourful and totally engaging – with a sonic shock when the electronics kick in to enlarge the instruments’ dimensions and capability. Currently standing at 45 minutes, were Boulez to carry out his desired extending, then Répons could last double that length. Further electronics follow with Dialogue de l’ombre double, a fascinating dialogue between a solo clarinettist (Damiens) and his recorded double. CD 10 contains the two pieces entitled Dérive; the first short, six minutes, the second (dedicated to Elliott Carter on his 100th-birthday) much longer at 44. Both exude compositional mastery and engage the listener from beginning to end. Dérive 2 is scored for string trio, piano, harp, two percussionists (one occupied by a xylophone and the other by a marimba), clarinet, horn, cor anglais and bassoon. The music’s sheer energy and incident is exhilarating in itself. Playing continuously one might hear Dérive 2 as being in three sections (of roughly 20, 15 and 10 minutes respectively), the middle one being a ‘slow movement’ of alluring fantasy-like reflection. The energetic ‘first movement’ is sustained over many stimulating pages, and the ‘finale’, when reached, is something of an accelerating recapitulation to the full-circle culmination, a return to the horn’s ‘A’ (now augmented) that launches the piece, to close a journey of considerable thrall. CD11 includes the coruscating piano solo, Incises (played brilliantly by Dimitri Vassilakis in its “version définitive 2001”, at nearly eleven minutes longer than hitherto). Incises is followed logically, and with a musical tie, by the 37-minute sur incises (for three pianos, three harps, and three percussionists), an active and gleaming score, its ideas lucid, their development a rollercoaster of endeavour. Une page d’éphéméride is a five-minute study for piano in which much happens – declamation, pedal effects, fierce gestures and explosive passages; Hidéki Nagano gives an winning account.
CD12 is of “historical recordings”. Le Marteau sans maître is now heard in an April 1964 Paris recording that is six minutes quicker, 32 to 38, than the later more lived-in Boulez-conducted version. With contralto Jeanne Deroubaix, the earlier taping has a pioneering fervour that is tangible. The ensemble includes guitarist Anton Stingl, and Severino Gazzelloni is the marvellous flautist; and it is he who in 1956 had recorded the Sonatina for Flute and Piano, with David Tudor, who had given the premiere (silently of course) of John Cage’s Four thirty-three. Also on this disc is the second version of Le Soleil des eaux, as premiered in Paris on 18 July 1950 conducted by Roger Désormière. Three solo singers and no choir in this scoring were to become soprano and chorus for the fourth version (as on disc 3).
The French/English booklet is exemplary. There is a recent (October 2011) interview with Boulez printed within its pages – the aural equivalent, in French, is the hour-long thirteenth compact disc; Boulez’s works are listed in alphabetical order together with where to find an introductory note to them in the annotation and on which CD to listen; there is a bibliography of Boulez’s own authoring and a selection of titles by others who have written about him; a time-line (“Points of Reference”) from his birth to 2011; and texts and translations for all the vocal works. It’s been compelling, illuminating and a privilege to work through the contents of this set, issued not for any anniversary but for reasons of sheer quality.
So by whose definition is this 13-CD anthology ‘complete’? The front cover may proudly trumpet ‘Pierre Boulez: Oeuvres Complètes’ but flipping the box around tells a different story. Nowhere there that magic word ‘complete’. Instead, just above where we’re told that the composer himself supervised this edition, you read ‘Pierre Boulez: Work in Progress’, which rather whiffs of a carefully chosen form of words agreed after long and pained telephone conversations between Boulez HQ and DG. Record companies like ‘definitive’ products, a cultural done deal ripe for the packaging. But Boulez, presumably, baulked at the notion of career retrospective, drawing a grand valedictory metaphorical double bar-line around his work.
And this wording does give Boulez plenty of wiggle-room. Airbrushed out of consideration, although readily available elsewhere on CD, are the sins of his youth. Polyphonie X was proto-Structures, Boulez’s first attempt to make total serialism fly within an instrumental context. The history books invariably cite it and the work’s 1951 premiere at Donaueschingen ruffled plenty of feathers. But you’re not going to hear it here. And ditto an early orchestral/electronic piece Poésie pour pouvoir (1958) and a youthful dummy-run at what would evolve into the final section of Pli selon pli, Tombeau à la mémoire du Prince Max Egon zu Fürstenberg (1959).
Nor, sad to say, are there any signs of those new projects Boulez has been discussing in recent interviews. We’re still waiting for Waiting for Godot: The Opera (could Boulez’s cunning concept be that it’ll never show up?), further instalments of his orchestral Notations and a violin/orchestral piece involving Anne-Sophie Mutter. As the great man said, work in progress. But, even if you’re a got-it-all Boulez collector, there is enough new/rare material here to tempt you in. Two pieces – Improvisé – pour le Dr Kalmus and Une page d’éphéméride – were recorded specifically for this edition. Boulez has opted to include a live 2010 Dérive II rather than the recording he released in 2005; meanwhile, an excellent live Livre pour cordes cut with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1992 is rescued from the historical graveyard of VHS video, and a 2007 recording of the orchestral Notations with Ensemble Modern is heard for the first time on disc. There’s also a bonus disc of historical curios: the 1950 premiere of Le soleil des eaux, a notably light-on-its-pins Le marteau sans maître from 1964 and a Sonatine featuring flautist Severino Gazzelloni and Cage’s main piano man David Tudor.
But what does listening to wall-to-wall Boulez teach us about his art? If the clichés and accepted histories run deep – Boulez as revolutionary, fidgety progressive, a man always but a word away from an ideological punch-up – the myths and paranoid untruths flow ever deeper. Boulez never did set out to destroy tradition. He was no left-wing revolutionary (like Nono), nor an anarchist (like Cage). No, the shocking revelation this set forces us to confront is how aesthetically settled and refined Boulez’s language had become by the mid-1960s. By the time of his 1958 orchestral piece Figures – Doubles – Prismes, and certainly by the time he composed cummings is der Dichter in 1970, you broadly know what to expect of a Boulez composition. The details, of course, change and fluctuate, but there are no stylistic bolts from the blue.
Which are not, I suspect, words that would gladden Boulez’s heart. But I come to praise his music, not to bury it. The only tradition Boulez wanted to annihilate – and properly so – was the tradition of freeloading off tradition, of tepidly reheating gestures for which the historical imperative could no longer function.
And, quite honestly, if audiences can ‘get’ Debussy’s La mer and Jeux, I see no reason to fear the well-sequined harmonies and glitter-and-be-gay timbres of Boulez’s ‘…explosante-fixe…’ or Dérive I. His sur Incises, for three pianos, three harps and three percussionists, is like a journey into the centre of an idea of Debussian textures long after the event, with Messiaen’s gamelan invocations pegged in the background. Even the notorious and crazily expensive-to-mount Répons for soloists, large ensemble and electronics – the joke being that it would be cheaper to send a Proms audience to Paris than bring Répons to the Proms – with its cheerfully chattering opening ensemble unisons and arrow-headed sense of urgent development, the harmony slowing down in the middle, bidding you in before Boulez works towards a conclusion, has a classic, traditional arc-like structure. Music like you always knew it was.
The early Boulez – particularly Book 1 of Structures, performed here with drill-bit might by the Kontarsky brothers – could feel like music collapsing towards automated mathematics, Boulez’s total serialism doing its worst; but, all these decades on, it’s time to cut the old boy some slack. The beauty of Structures lies in its powerful, sometimes eerie reconfiguration of the familiar piano, the gestural white canvas Boulez needed for what would come next: Le marteau sans maître, Piano Sonata No 3 and Pli selon pli. If pushed, though, I’d claim Rituel: in memoriam Bruno Maderna as his standout moment, especially in the cool ritual of this 1982 BBC SO performance; the emotional engagement with a fallen hero crashing into the objectifying power of Boulez’s music. Result: complete satisfaction.
