cover photo by Sebastian Unrau on Unsplash I said this was a thing I was going to do, and I’m finally sort of getting around to it. I came to know Mahler’s symphonies very much out of order. To my … Continue reading Memories: Mahler 1
performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Pierre Boulez (cover image by Patrick Hendry) Mark him well—he is a man on the eve of celebrity. Serge Diaghilev of Igor Stravinsky This piece may well be the most famous of Stravinsky’s, … Continue reading Stravinsky: The Firebird
performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Pierre Boulez, or below with the London Symphony under Robert Craft The conductor need not try to polish sounds which seem unbalanced, but watch that every instrumentalist plays accurately the prescribed dynamic, according … Continue reading Schoenberg: Five Pieces for Orchestra, op. 16
performed by Jessye Norman, László Polgár and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Pierre Boulez, or below by Anne Sofie von Otter, John Tomlinson and the Berlin Philharmonic under Bernard Haitink (There’s also an English version with Gwynne Howell, Sally Burgess and … Continue reading Bartók: Bluebeard’s Castle
performed by Janis Martin and the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Pierre Boulez, or by the astoundingly talented Jessye Norman at the Metropolitan Opera under James Levine (the only one I can find with subtitles), or in a higher-quality video below featuring … Continue reading Schoenberg: Erwartung, op. 17
performed by the Ensemble InterContemporain, or below by members of the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle, from The Proms 2016 Boulez completed his Éclat for 15 instruments in 1965. Properly (I think?) called Éclat-Multiples, it is (or was to be) … Continue reading Boulez: Éclat
performed by Paavali Jumppanen (from his outstanding release of the three Boulez sonatas), or in an (at least) equally superb reading from the wonderful Maurizio Pollini Boulez and tradition. L’enfant terrible. A polemic. A rebel. A radical. The guy who said … Continue reading Boulez Piano Sonata no. 2
performed by Leif Ove Andsnes and the Berlin Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez, or below by the Géza Anda and the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Bernard Haitink https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfOJCKN148M Since we discussed the first piano concerto earlier this week, I’d like to suggest … Continue reading Bartók Piano Concerto no. 2, Sz. 95, BB 101
performed by Anne Sofie von Otter and the Vienna Philharmonic under Claudio Abbado or, because she’s an outstanding performer and it’s a (somewhat unclear) video of a live performance, Jessye Norman and the London Symphony under Pierre Boulez If you’ve … Continue reading Berg: Sieben frühe Lieder
performed by the Vienna Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7y0_Z3uXts Es gibt doch nur eine VI. trotz der Pastorale. Alban Berg The sixth is a collection of questions, an enigma, a knot to be untied by repeated listenings and the development of … Continue reading Revisit: Mahler Symphony no. 6 in Am
performed by the Vienna Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tudx_c_XMMQ From the order of the movements (where the usual first movement now comes second) it is difficult to speak of a key for the ‘whole Symphony’, and to avoid misunderstandings the … Continue reading Revisit: Mahler Symphony no. 5
featuring Yun Peng Zhao from Quatuor Diotima. Listen here or in iTunes, or an abridged Chinese version here But when you listen to the twentieth century, maybe just give up this habit, for example, nice melody. For example, some drama… maybe … Continue reading Podcast: Livre pour Quatuor Diotima
performed by Hilary Summers and the Ensemble Intercontemporain under the composer’s baton Claude Samuels: I have one final question: what do you expect of the listener? You have an enlightened music lover who has this set of discs in hand; … Continue reading Boulez: Le Marteau sans Maître
performed by Paavali Jumppanen (from his album of the three sonatas) or below by Pierre-Laurent Aimard (from Boulez’s Ouvres Completes box set), both fantastic performances We now jump forward a little bit in time to another of Boulez’s still-early works, the first … Continue reading Boulez Piano Sonata no. 1
performed by Pierre-Laurent Aimard, or the first Notation performed by the composer, also below We start off our discussion of the Darmstadt school with Pierre Boulez. Needless to say, this is going to be a tough month of articles, for … Continue reading Boulez: Douze Notations
performed by members of the London Symphony Orchestra under Pierre Boulez, or the below with (members of) the Berlin Philharmonic also under Boulez Greater unity is impossible. Even the Netherlander didn’t manage it. In the fourth variation there are constant … Continue reading Webern: Symphony, op. 21
(Songs on the Death of Children) performed by Anne Sofie von Otter and the Vienna Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez Rückert’s 428 poems on the death of children became singular, almost manic documents of the psychological endeavor to cope with such … Continue reading Mahler: Kindertotenlieder
performed by Mitsuko Uchida and the Cleveland orchestra under Pierre Boulez Finally! It’s here. I’ve been eager to write this article now for years. It was a strange experience I had with this work, as I was describing to someone the … Continue reading Schoenberg Piano Concerto, op. 42
performed by the Quatuor Parisii from the DG box set the Livre pour Quatuor, from its history as well as its overall economy, does not appear as a bloc but, in reference to Mallarmé’s Livre, like a series of detachable pages that … Continue reading Pierre Boulez: Livre pour Quatuor (1962)
(title image located here, from the Dutch National Archive) In this video of Mitsuko Uchida speaking about Schoenberg’s piano concerto, she mentions how Debussy and Schoenberg approached their rebellion against tonality in different ways. She says (I’m paraphrasing; just go watch … Continue reading Influential People: Pierre Boulez
performed by the Vienna Philharmonic and Violeta Urmana under Pierre Boulez, or in full here with Anna Larsson. Below is a recording of Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen with Magdalena Kožena and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra under Claudio Abbado So it’s a leap … Continue reading Leap Day: Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder
Fugue for Thought 