Pierre Boulez
* Sur Incises (1996-98)*
* Messagesquisse (1976-77)^
* Anthemes 2 (1997)**
Soloists of the Ensemble Intercontemporain*, Hae-Sun Kang (violin)**,
Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello)^, Ensemble de violoncelles de Paris^/Pierre
Boulez*^ Deutsche Grammophon 289 463475-2 Total time: 66:08
Summary for the Busy Executive: Super-solo.
For many years now, Boulez has been writing some of the most beautiful
and most beautifully-made music around. I admit I don't like everything
he's done - the piano sonatas, for example, have for me all the charm
of a concrete sofa - but such pieces are few. Then again, my image of
Boulez differs from that of many others, who picture him as a super-brain,
to the exclusion of everything else. I, on the other hand, see him in
the long line of French composers besotted with color and the "sensuous
form" - the passion for proportion and beauty of line. One may find it
hard to accept this view, usually because one confuses Boulez's writings
about his music (almost always terrible, unhelpful, and pretentious)
with the music itself. I recall in particular one composer-supplied
program note to a Cleveland Orchestra performance of Pli selon pli in
which he compared the music to Brownian motion. If you found yourself
in a kind mood, you'd call it poetry. If you actually know what "Brownian
motion" means, you'd more likely call it meadowmuffins. The latter for
me. I became so angry at this flummery that the program note actually
got in the way of my hearing the music. It took me decades before I
came around to this piece, and then only because I'd heard other Boulez
works without his critical "help" in the meantime.
All the works on this program began as solo pieces: Sur Incises as a
work for solo piano; Anthemes 2 for solo violin; Messagesquisse for solo
cello. Two of them are further linked through their dedication to one
of the great musical patrons, the Swiss conductor Paul Sacher. I haven't
heard any of the originals, but my reactions to the CD program range
from unqualified wow to unqualified wow. Each one of these works
re-imagines the relation between solo and ensemble.
However, one thing I knew after a couple of sentences: ignore the liner
notes by Wolfgang Fink, typical European self-absorbed windbaggery, which
aims not to illuminate the pieces, but to show the smarts of the writer
(it fails). Moreover, it's plain bad writing. Some small examples will
suffice:
Virtual infinity, music apparently without beginning or
end or, in the wider context of the history of ideas, the
open-endedness of the modern work of art: this is the radical
conclusion that Pierre Boulez has drawn from atonality and
from static and asymmetrical rhythm and metre in the wake of
Webern, Stravinsky and Messiaen. In order to illustrate this
fundamental change of attitude, he has suggested the image of
a labyrinth - a structure involving ideas and experiences
which, unlike the traditionally unambiguous Euclidean language
of forms, acknowledges new convolutions and directions whose
feasibility demands to be discovered and patiently explored.
Of course, the passage means very little other than the writer has
substituted vocabulary for thought (does the writer know what the phrase
"Euclidean language of forms" means, for example? If so, I suspect he
may be the only one), but it does offer the advantage that you needn't
hear the pieces in question to come up with the prose. Later on, he
says the "music unfolds like a prism." As far as I know, prisms neither
fold nor unfold. The notes also include Fink's interview with Boulez.
It's a sad state of affairs when Boulez is the clearest writer in the
room.
Anthemes 2, one of the Sacher works, gave me the most problems, but not
because of the music, quite straightforward and very lovely. It seems
that the violinist plays against itself in some sort of combination of
recording and live electronic wizardry, but the details are lost in
Fink's description. If anyone can untangle the snarl, I'd be grateful
to know exact ly what goes on. At any rate, it sounds a lot less
intellectually formidable than Fink's description: like a solo violin
against a violin ensemble in some super-echo chamber. The work consists
of an introduction and six movements, the last one subdivided into three.
Most of it comes across like brilliant variations on a small kit of
musical ideas. The last movement seems different somehow, but without
a score I can't tell whether Boulez has inserted new material. It may
well turn out as variations more complicated than my ear can take in.
At the end of each movement come passages of quiet slides and harmonics
(marked "libre"). Boulez compares the structure to "strophes." As you
can tell, I think "theme-and-variation" more revealing of what goes on,
but I do take the composer's point. The "libre" passages come across
as other-worldly benedictions, capping their movements. The composer
operates at a peak of invention just for the different string sounds
alone he comes up with.
The oldest piece on the program, Messagesquisse, also shows the most
traditional relation between soloist and ensemble. In this case, a cello
soloist takes the lead of a cello ensemble. As opposed to Anthemes 2,
where one distinguishes the electronically-enhanced soloist from the
electronically-realized ensemble only occasionally, the Messagesquisse
solo behaves closer to the lead of, say, a Bach violin concerto - that
is, not quite a star, but certainly first among equals. Boulez mentions
that, aside from the "Sacher" theme (E-flat, A, C, B, E, D; E-flat = S
and B = H in the German notational system, while R = re = D in the French
system), he got two particular points of inspiration. Knowing that
Rostropovich would premiere the work, he instantly thought "virtuosity,"
which led him to thoughts of Paganini. He quotes nothing from that
composer, but he does use Paganini's favorite device of moto perpetuo.
He also thought of the quick and quirky finale to the Chopin B-flat
sonata and provides one of his own. One would think that all those
cellos would produce a thick, tubby sound, but Boulez's rhythmic and
contrapuntal virtuosity keep the music lively and athletic. Furthermore,
Boulez creates a beautiful, yet idiosyncratic rhetorical structure. In
terms of minutes alone, the slow music fills more time than the fast,
yet the music impresses at least me as a piece that just whips along,
with only the occasional pause to catch one's breath.
As good as the preceding are (and they're wonderful), Sur Incises
Knocks me out. Considered solely as a piece of composing, it's the
Work of a master. The ensemble consists of three pianos, three harps,
and three percussion players. You'd think that three pianos all by
themselves would turn any texture to mud or to a Spector-like wall o'
sound. Boulez, however, is characteristically mad on counterpoint and
on linear independence. He doesn't like to waste notes. He *wants* you
to hear everything. Some of the clarity comes from Boulez's placement
of the pianos (roughly: left, right, and center), but that contributes
minimally. I have no idea how he does the rest of it, but he pulls it
off and writes powerful music besides. It's not all brainwork. Indeed,
the piece that kept coming to mind - without Boulez stealing anything -
was the Bartok Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. Furthermore, as I
went back and re-listened to the two other works, I began to hear echoes
of Bartok and Stravinsky. Boulez himself points out the inspiration of
Stravinsky's Les Noces, but I think of Boulez's Sur Incises as fundamentally
different. Stravinsky explores mass of sound applied to ostinato: the
music almost stands still, with sections sharply cut from one another.
Boulez links one idea to another: the music constantly transforms,
pivoting from one motific shape to another related one - a kind of
structural "enharmonic" shift.
Boulez, a virtuosic orchestrator, comes up with an ensemble whose parts
are subtly distinctive. The pluck of the harps obviously relate to the
"harp" color of the piano (indeed, at some points the pianists work the
strings of their instruments, rather than the keys). They differ in the
nature of their attack. On the other hand, the tap of the tuned percussion
relates to the keyboard attack, while the color differs. The piece falls
into two movements, played without a break. The first movement opens
very much like several Bartok works - in a kind of stately funk, as ideas
are brooded over and deliberated on. About a third of the way in, the
music suddenly shoots out of a gun, as we see these ideas fly by maybe
four times as fast. The fast music comprises the meat of the movement,
but roughly four minutes from the end it grinds into torpor, all the
while attempting to return to speed.
The second movement breaks out with rapid lines. It's even more
Bartokian than the first, in the sense that one hears lots of imitation
going on among the three pianos, although, again, you wouldn't mistake
Boulez for Bartok. For one thing, the music moves along in spurts, with
periods for catching your breath. It's also chock-full of cadenzas.
Apparently, each of the pianists get at least one cadenza of his own and
even, according to the liner notes, competes against the other two. The
percussion and harp ensembles also get to shine in cadenza-like passages,
rhythmically very free, at any rate.
The performers are, as my teen-aged cousin would say, "totally awesome,"
there apparently being no spectrum of awesomeness. As you can probably
tell, every piece on the program demands wonderful musicians working at
the top of their game. Boulez himself leads Sur Incises, an account
that left my heart racing and my mouth gaping. Almost no matter how
complicated the interaction between the three sets of instruments gets,
one still hears clear interaction. Of course, it will take me more than
one sitting to begin to get this piece as it deserves to be got, but the
performance won't hinder me. Indeed, this performance (as every other
on the disc) makes a strong case for the beauty of Boulez's music.
It's hard for me to single out violinist Hae-Sun Kang's contribution,
because I can't distinguish her from her electronic alter egos.
Nevertheless, the "realization" of Anthemes 2 is gorgeous. She must
have had at least something to do with that. Messagesquisse stands
as the most conventional work on the program, and thus the easiest to
criticize. The ensemble cellists and the soloist have their musical
antennae vibrating in sensitive accord. One is conscious not of complicated
music, but of profound conversation among the forces - Beaux-Arts-quality
chamber playing.
DG has wrapped Boulez in a superior package and lavished the recording
with great sound. As hard as these works must be to play, solving the
recording problems they present must be nightmarish. Maybe these works
will find better recordings, but you will have to show me.
Steve Schwartz
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