Pierre Boulez ~ Schoenberg ˇ Berio ˇ Carter ˇ Kurtág ˇ Xenakis

Pierre Boulez ~ Schoenberg ˇ Berio ˇ Carter ˇ Kurtág ˇ Xenakis

Pierre Boulez ~ Schoenberg · Berio · Carter · Kurtág · Xenakis
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CD Details

Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1995-06-06
Music Label: Elektra / Wea / Erato
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
  1. Pelleas Und Melisande - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
  2. Introduction - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
  3. Theme - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
  4. Variation I - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
  5. Variation II - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
  6. Variation III - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
  7. Variation IV - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
  8. Variation V - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
  9. Variation VI - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
  10. Variation VII - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
  11. Variation VIII - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
  12. Variation IX - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
  13. Finale - Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Music CD 2
  1. I - Regis Pasquier
  2. II - O King - Regis Pasquier
  3. III - In ruhig fliessender Bewegung - Regis Pasquier
  4. IV - Regis Pasquier
  5. V - Regis Pasquier
  6. Eindruke - Orchestre National De France
Music CD 3
  1. Concerto Pour Hautbois - Pierre Boulez
  2. Esprit Rude/Esprit Doux - Pierre Boulez
  3. Anaphora - Pierre Boulez
  4. Argument - Pierre Boulez
  5. Sandpiper - Pierre Boulez
  6. Insomnia - Pierre Boulez
  7. View Of The Capitol From The Library Of Congress - Pierre Boulez
  8. O Breath - Pierre Boulez
  9. Penthode - Pierre Boulez
Music CD 4
  1. Messages De Feu Demoiselle R. V. Troussova - Adrienne Csengery
  2. For 16 Voices And 3 Instrumental Groups - Pierre Boulez
  3. Modulations - Pierre Boulez
Music CD 5
  1. Jalons - Pierre Boulez
  2. Antiphysis - Istvan Matuz
  3. Version I - Pierre Boulez
  4. Version II - Pierre Boulez

Music reviews of Pierre Boulez ~ Schoenberg ˇ Berio ˇ Carter ˇ Kurtág ˇ Xenakis

Music Review: Most of this has been reissued, but a few fine recordings can still be heard only here
Rating: 3 Stars

In the 1980s, Pierre Boulez and the Ensemble Intercontemporain recorded a number of fine contemporary pieces for Erato. This box set then collected these discs, but it passed out of print fairly quickly. In time, however, Erato was acquired by Warner Classics, who reissued some of these recordings under its budget line Apex, namely the pieces by Carter, Berio and Xenakis. There's a lot here, and you can read my opinions of the Carter, Berio and Xenakis on the individual Amazon listings, so this review will be limited to those pieces still not available elsewhere that interested me.

Brian Ferneyhough has made his reputation as a composer of extremely difficult works for strings. The two "Funerailles" pieces (1969-80), both for string sextet, double bass, and harp, are meant to be played in the same concert programme but not consecutively. Ferneyhough's music is hyper-complex, going beyond typical mid-century serialism in its organization of all elements. Many of his pieces, I find, lack gestalt and just become dull, grey note spinning. The "Funerailles" pieces, however, are more appealing. In the first, the listener is amazed that a continual flow is established when each note comes from a different instrument than the last, most involving extended techniques: a pizzicato on violin, drumming on the strings of the cello, some icy harmonics. The second piece is more anguished, with longer individual contributions such as a twisting viola line in the background or a harp solo. A fine introduction to the composer, though for me it proved to all go downhill from here.

Gyorgy Kurtag's "Messages of the Late R.V. Trussova" op. 17 (1976-1980), a setting of twenty Russian-language poems of Rimma Dalos for soprano and ensemble. Pierre Boulez's televised performance with the Ensemble Intercontemporain and Csengery in 1981 marked Kurtag's international breakthrough, and it's easy to see why the piece was so instantly likeable. Rimma Dalos, a Russian poet living in Hungary, writes in a tone as charming as a schoolgirl's, but with profound references to a woman's inner self. Kurtag's music accompanies the text perfectly, with the sequence ranging from white-heat eroticism to burlesque. Kurtag's music here is his trademark "Bartok compressed to Webern's brevity", with a prominent part for cimbalom. This is a fine performance, but if you can't track this one down, the recording on Hungaroton with an all-Hungarian ensemble is just as good.

The only English composer that Boulez has championed is Harrison Birtwistle, and here we have his "...agm..." for 16 voices and 3 instrumental groups (1979), a setting of Sappho's fragments that itself feels highly fragmentary. The text is never terribly intelligible, being thrown out by the choir in unstable rhythms. Birtwistle's generally have a severity and greyness to them, but his writing here is suprisingly Boulezian. My only real complaint is that the recording is less than ideal, with the entire ensemble sounding very far away from the microphones. It is really hard to believe that this is an IRCAM recording.

Gerard Grisey's "Modulations" for 33 musicians (1978) came to form part of his great cycle "Les Espaces Acoustiques". Here the spectralist composer presents material that is constantly in flux, with the common bedrock spectrum of "Les Espaces Acoustiques" on a very low E flat (41.2 Hz) becoming progressively transformed towards noise. Boulez's take on "Modulations" is the slowest on recording, 18:36 against Asbury's 16:10 on a Kairos disc and Valade's 13:23 on an Accord set. It has been claimed that Boulez didn't understand the work, and in any event I find the piece works better as part of the entire cycle (the way it segues into the following "Transitoires" is awesome), so its presence here doesn't make the box set especially must-have.

So a few of the pieces still exclusive to this set are interesting, and it is a pity that Warner Classics has not re-released them too.
More Pierre Boulez ~ Schoenberg ˇ Berio ˇ Carter ˇ Kurtág ˇ Xenakis free music reviews:
1

Description of Pierre Boulez ~ Schoenberg ˇ Berio ˇ Carter ˇ Kurtág ˇ Xenakis

Collecting five CDs for about the price of three, this set of Boulez recordings is without parallel among the conductor's new-music releases. Imagine getting Boulez's celebrated single CD of Luciano Berio's Sinfonia and Eindrücke and his equally impressive single CD of Arnold Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande and Variations for Orchestra, bundled with four pivotal Elliott Carter works, Sir Harrison Birtwistle's electrifying ...AGM..., Gérard Grisey's Modulations, Iannis Xenakis's Jalons, Hugues Dufourt's Antiphysis, and Brian Ferneyhough's Funerailles, and you have an idea how far this set stretches.

There are the uproarious moments of Berio's clattery free-for-all approach easily juxtaposed against Schoenberg's more measured Variations, as it illuminates the crossroads of serialism and standard classical methodologies. The most astonishing moments come in the Kurtag songs, themselves echoing Pierrot Lunaire, and the Birtwistle work, which crosses extended vocal patterns with exclamatory orchestral interruptions to great effect. For anyone interested in Boulez's conductorly contributions to the postserial world, this is a surefire collection that opens the window on the great one's magic with difficult, thorny music. It also serves as a fascinating primer on the expansion of new music's techniques, especially when you consider the Elliott Carter works, all of them post-1975 and each uniquely expanding the American canon immeasurably, or the Grisey, Dufourt, and Ferneyhough works, as each of these composers came of age in the post-World War II era. --Andrew Bartlett

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