Pierre Boulez was Olivier Messiaen’s student, and while his creative life followed a very different course, something very special happened whenever Boulez conducted Messiaen’s music in concert. That was certainly the case in Frankfurt in 1990, when Boulez directed the superb young players of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie in the dazzling Chronochromie, and joined another supreme Messiaen interpreter – pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard – to perform Oiseaux Exotiques with his own Ensemble Intercontemporain. No one understood Messiaen’s music more profoundly than Boulez, and a documentary-style introduction from musicologist Michael Nupen sets the context for this uniquely authoritative celebration of two of France’s greatest postwar composers.
Pierre Boulez conducts Varèse
“I dream of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds,” said Edgard Varèse, and what better interpreter of his astonishing, genre-defying soundscapes than Pierre Boulez – arguably his spiritual successor, and perhaps the only figure in postwar French music whose sonic imagination matched Varèse’s own? In this 1990 concert from Frankfurt’s Alte Oper, Boulez conducts the youthful virtuosi of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie in the shattering Amériques and directs Ensemble Intercontemporain in near-definitive accounts of Ionisation, Offrandes and Octandre. First, though, musicologist Michael Nupen offers an expert introduction to this most innovative of 20th-century musical minds.
Boulez conducts Schoenberg, Stravinsky & De Falla – Triple Bill
In the second half of his long and extraordinary career Pierre Boulez emerged as one of the most compelling exponents of 20th-century music – never more penetrating than when directing the virtuoso players of his own Ensemble Intercontemporain. In this inspired triple-bill from the Theater an der Wien, recorded shortly before the master’s 80th birthday, soprano Anja Silja performs a fully-staged version of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire – paired by Boulez with near-contemporary masterworks by Stravinsky and De Falla. Viennese modernism meets the world of the Ballets Russes, in the hands of a conductor who approached all music through the lens of his own dazzling creativity.
Ensemble Intercontemporain – Celestial Mechanics
In the year of its 40th anniversary, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, famous for its performances of 20th and 21st century music, presented five very special programmes at the Cité de la Musique and the Théâtre de Chaillot in Paris, each one of them dealing with its own particular subject. The single works performed in the 5 concerts are available as 23 individual films. Celestial Mechanics brings together the works of the basque composer Ramon Lazkano and his german colleague Matthias Pintscher, who, as different as their musical style may be, share the penchant of getting inspired by nature, the sky, the wind, and the evanescence of all living things.
Ensemble Intercontemporain – Rothko Chapel
In the year of its 40th anniversary, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, famous for its performances of 20th and 21st century music, presented five very special programmes at the Cité de la Musique and the Théâtre de Chaillot in Paris, each one of them dealing with its own particular subject. The single works performed in the 5 concerts are available as 23 individual films. Rothko Chapel is a musical evening dedicated to the visual arts, which contains reflections not only on the Rothko Chapel in Houston, adorned with 14 paintings by Mark Rothko, but also on works by Markus Lüpertz and Anselm Kiefer.
Paris: Hommage à Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez, a seminal figure in the field of contemporary classical music, died on January 5th 2016. His name is closely connected to the Orchestre de Paris, which he has conducted more than a hundred times, and to the Philharmonie de Paris, whose “Grande Salle Pierre Boulez” was brought into existence due to his continuous endeavor.Two weeks after Boulez’ death, supported by young musicians from the Conservatoire de Paris, the Orchestra de Paris joined forces with the Ensemble Intercontemporain and the IRCAM – both founded by Pierre Boulez – in order to pay him tribute. The programme of this very special evening features a varied selection of the composer’s works. As a result of the concert night, “one simple word comes up, full of enthusiasm and emotion: merci…” (Bachtrack). PROGRAM: Pierre Boulez: Dialogue de l’ombre double extraits; Improvisation I; Messagesquisse; Dérive 1 pour six instruments; Improvisation II; Notations pour orchestre I, IV, III, II, VII
In C – A ballet by Sasha Waltz
Terry Riley’s landmark work of musical minimalism In C comes to life in this choreography by Sasha Waltz. Captured on film at the Philharmonie de Paris, no two performances of this work are ever the same. In C, consisting of 53 melodic phrases played in sequence, is translated into 53 movements with a set of rules. Within these rules, each dancer has the freedom to decide how often to repeat a certain figure. As the performers on stage execute and repeat the movement patterns, they develop a sort of “danced fugue” (NDR): “All the time, Waltz and her ensemble show us a dialogue between music and dance. What makes In C extra fascinating is that what we also have here is a conversation with space and time, the looping and overlaying movement, especially when laid over the repeating and overlapping sound, disrupting the latter in particular” (Seeing Dance).