Daniel Barenboim at yesterday’s opening concert of the 38th International Musikfest at the Wiener Konzerthaus – the festival will focus on the oeuvre of Pierre Boulez, in 14 concerts compositions by Boulez will be performed over the next six weeks.
Find out more on the website of the Wiener Konzerthaus.
This Saturday, 29 April, Darragh Morgan will be performing Pierre Boulez’ Anthèmes 2 and Steve Reich’s Violin Phase at the launch concert for his new album “For Violin and Electronics”.
The concert takes place at the Iklectik in London.
Pierre Boulez dedicated Dérive 2 to his fellow composer Elliott Carter. The composer on Dérive 2: “When I reflected on some of Ligeti’s compositions, I felt the desire to dedicate myself to some almost theoretical research into periodicity in order to systematically examine its overlays, its shifts and its exchange.”
The work will have its Croatian première on 23 April at the Zagreb Youth Theatre. David Fulmer conducts the Ensemble intercontemporain.
With the Ensemble intercontemporain, Matthias Pintscher will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the ensembles founding in an evening that pays homage to Pierre Boulez.
arte will broadcast the whole concert live on 18 March at 20:30. On the programme: works by Arnold Schönberg, Anton Webern and Pierre Boulez.
The 38th International Musikfest at the Wiener Konzerthaus focuses on the oeuvre of Pierre Boulez – in 14 concerts all of his compositions will be performed.
Find out more on the website of the Wiener Konzerthaus.
Prof. Dr. Martin Zenck’s book Pierre Boulez: Die Partitur der Geste und das Theater der Avantgarde was presented on 18 November at the Academy of Music in Mainz in a memorial concert for the great composer who passed away this January.
Pianist Pi-Hsien Chen performed both versions of Boulez’ Troisième Sonate pour piano.
The great hall of the Philharmonie de Paris has been named for its ‘spiritual father’, Pierre Boulez. The inauguration ceremony took place on 26 October in attendance of French Culture Minister Audrey Azoulay and Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris.
On 26 January Matthias Pintscher, Paavo Järvi, Bruno Mantovani, Yeree Suh, Andrew Gerzso, the Ensemble intercontemporain, Orchestre de Paris and the Elèves du Conservatoire de Paris paid homage to Pierre Boulez at the Philharmonie de Paris.
On the programme were Improvisation I, Messagesquisse, Improvisation II, Dérive 1, Notations I-IV and VII and extracts from Dialogue de l'ombre double.
You can watch the full concert here:
The memorial service for Pierre Boulez at the Saint-Sulpice church in Paris was attended last Friday by the French prime minister Manuel Valls, the culture minister Fleur Pellerin as well as the former culture minister Jack Lang.
The musician Daniel Barenboim spoke of Boulez’s legacy as a man of the future interested in many things beyond music – for Barenboim, Boulez was a “true man of the future”.
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Laurent Bayle, president of the Philharmonie de Paris, recalled Boulez’ creative achievements including Boulez’s lifelong disdain for “les invalides de la nostalgie”. The most moving and evocative homage was delivered ex tempore by the architect Renzo Piano, recalling Boulez’s lifelong search for beauty: “Merci, Pierre, Merci.” |
Today at 7:30 CET/CEST, the Austrian radio station Ö1 presents the 2 1/2 hour programme In memoriam Pierre Boulez.
In the studio: Lothar Knessl, who knew Pierre Boulez since the post-war years, Christian Scheib, who was responsible for the script of “Pierre Boulez in Salzburg”, Florian Rosensteiner, who worked as a producer with Boulez, and Albert Hosp, who interviewed him for Ö1 on Mahler and Szymanowsky.
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Beautiful – Georg Friedrich Haas’ Morgen und Abend and the “Total Immersion: Boulez at 90” programme made it into Fiona Maddocks’ best classical music of 2015 article:
In tribute to Pierre Boulez, this special evening brings together three great moments of musical and choreographic modernity and reunites two other major creative forces of the 20th century whose works Boulez has often conducted: György Ligeti and Igor Stravinsky.
Set to Boulez’ Anthèmes II, British choreographer Wayne McGregor’s ballet Alea Sands will première on 3 December at the Opéra national de Paris and be performed together with Polyphonie and Le Sacre du printemps.
Listen to a podcast produced by the Opéra national de Paris:
None of the dreams we indulged as adolescents at Oberlin would have even entered our minds without the intrepidity and the audacity of Pierre Boulez. […] In the words of Boulez himself, “Music is a labyrinth with no beginning and no end, full of new paths to discover, where mystery remains eternal.” (Claire Chase & Joshua Rubin, ICE co-artistic directors)
Honouring Pierre Boulez’ 90th birthday, conductor and bassoonist Pascal Gallois and the International Contemporary Ensemble present their Boulez 90 – New Dialogues programme at the National Sawdust – a new performance venue for contemporary music in Brooklyn – on 17, 18, 19 and 21 November. A selection of Boulez’ oeuvre will be performed alongside works of his contemporaries and those of young composers.
ICE is performing together with bassoonist Pascal Gallois on this project that was recently on tour in Paris and Brittany in France. A highlight of the concert series will be performances of Le Marteau sans maître with mezzosoprano Katalin Károlyi and Éclat.
The fully orchestrated versions, composed towards the end of the century, were laid bare by the presentation of the original piano pieces of 1945, written when he was just 20. It was a revelation. (Jonathan McAloon, The Telegraph, 24 August 2015)
Jonathan McAloon has recently reviewed A Day for Pierre Boulez for The Telegraph. The concert was held on Sunday, 23 August, at the Lucerne Festival.