Nicolas Baldeyrou DIALOGUES

 

DIALOGUES

 

Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain / Daniel Kawka PIERRE BOULEZ Le Marteau sans Maître PHILIPPE MANOURY B-Partita

                                           LE MARTEAU SANS MAITRE - B-PARTITA

DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON | THE BEST OF BEST SELECTED BY RYUICHI SAKAMOTO

                             THE BEST OF BEST SELECTED BY RYUICHI SAKAMOTO

Grupo Encuentros / Alicia Terzian 40 YEARS OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC

Since composer, conductor and musicologist Alicia Terzian founded Grupos Encuentros in 1978, the six-person group has garnered international acclaim for its success at bringing the music of avant-garde Argentinian and Latin American composers to the world. On 40 YEARS OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC, their debut recording for NAVONA RECORDS, the group combines compositions from such well-known Latin American composers as Heitor Villa-Lobos, Alberto Ginastera, and Terzian herself with works by an international array of composers that ranges from Anton Webern (Germany) to Luciano Berio (Italy) to Franz Schreker (Austria) to Pierre Boulez (France).

Grupo Encuentros consists of mezzo soprano Marta Blanco, pianist Claudio Espector, flutist Fabio Mazzitelli, clarinetist Matias Tchicourel, violinist Sergio Polizzi and violoncellist Carlos Nozzi.  In this CD, saxophonist Maria Noel Luzzardo, oboist Ruben Albornoz, bassoonist Ernesto Imsand and percussionist Arauco Yepes join Encuentros Group. The program presented on 40 YEARS OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC originally premiered at the annual Encuentros International Festivas in Buenos Aires and truly highlights the brilliance of these award-winning musicians, who have earned high praise from such media outlets as the Los Angeles Times, where they were lauded as “deeply serious and challenging.” Over their 40 year-long career, the group has performed in more than 300 concert halls and festivals of the main cities of five continents including London’s Royal Albert Hall and New York City’s Merkin Auditorium.

40 YEARS OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC transcends cultural boundaries with such selections as Villa-Lobos’ Choro No 7, which unites the sounds of Amerindian primitivism with the polkas and waltzes of suburban dance halls in Brazil. Emphasizing her status as a renowned ethnomusicologist, Terzian dedicates her composition Yagua Ya Yuca to the Chiriguano and Chanel peoples, who belong to a lost indigenous northwestern Argentinian culture O King was composed the same year as the assassination of Martin Luther King, a tragedy which deeply affected its Italian composer Luciano Berio.

Grupo Encuentros founder Alicia Terzian has composed over 80 compositions for orchestras, orchestra with soloist, and chamber orchestras with and without soloists, musical theater, dance, and multimedia. She travels the world giving seminars on composition and contemporary chamber music at European and American universities and is often invited to participate on juries at international compositions.

Michael Barenboim / Daniel Barenboim / Wiener Philharmoniker / Pierre Boulez SCHOENBERG Violin & Piano Concerti

Peral Music—Daniel Barenboim’s digital record label “for the thinking ear”—is proud to release the Vienna Philharmonic’s debut recordings of Arnold Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto and Piano Concerto, featuring the iconic composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim, and violinist Michael Barenboim. The new release captures the esteemed Vienna Philharmonic’s first performances of both works.

Dating from 2005 and 2012, these are the Vienna Philharmonic’s first recordings of two of Schoenberg’s works: the Piano Concerto with Daniel Barenboim under Pierre Boulez and the Violin Concerto with Michael Barenboim under the direction of his father.

The Vienna Philharmonic has enjoyed a close bond with Schoenberg’s music, since he himself conducted two performances of his Gurre-Lieder in 1920 and afterwards wrote a personal letter of thanks, expressing his gratitude to the musicians for their work together. Since then there have been more than 100 performances of his works, and the orchestra even played an important part in the foundation of the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna in 1998.

It is all the harder to believe that the Vienna Philharmonic had never previously played either of these two works. For Daniel Barenboim the orchestra’s performances of Schoenberg’s music are full of “tenderness, good-natured informality and naturalness.” Their “playing is very much inspired by the venue.”

This makes it all the more inconceivable that these works by arguably the greatest composer of the 20th century, and a native of Vienna to boot, had been overlooked by the orchestra for so many years.

It was not until 2005 that Pierre Boulez conducted the Vienna Philharmonic’s first performance of Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto, when the soloist was Daniel Barenboim. Seven years later Barenboim returned with his son Michael and the two of them gave the first performance of Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto op. 36 with the orchestra. “Highly explosive music,” Michael Barenboim describes Schoenberg’s piece: “Every bar is aflame.” The work’s difficulties are plain. When it received its first performance in 1940, the composer’s daughter, Gertrud Greissle, remarked that “The difficulties are not purely intentional, but they are unavoidable.” Even today the virtuosity of Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto instils a sense of awe in many violinists. For a time Jascha Heifetz regarded the work as unplayable.

But for Barenboim, “Where other orchestras wrestle with the difficulties, the Viennese may do so as well, but they then discover themselves in the music, and this is really wonderful.”

Zimerman / Andsnes / Grimaud / Boulez BARTÓK Piano Concertos

This is an interesting idea: to combine performances by different pianists and different orchestras. It calls attention to this being Boulez's Bartók . . . Krystian Zimerman takes a direct, hard-hitting approach to the opening Allegro moderator of the First Concerto, in which he is joined by Boulez and the Chicagoans. Every note is crystal clear, and the concerto benefits from Zimerman's stunning pianism and the exquisite brass-playing of this great orchestra . . . Zimerman and Boulez display extraordinary concentration throughout the Andante, and the Allegro molto finale is sheer brilliance . . . The recorded sound is clean and open, keeping both piano and orchestra to the fore. On balance, this is as fine a recording of the First Concerto as any I have heard . . . Hélène Grimaud . . . produces the warmth and gentleness that so many miss in this elegant, comparatively relaxed concerto, which the dying Bartók wrote so that his widow could make a living playing it. Boulez seems totally in synch with Grimaud . . . They attack the finale strongly . . . Revisiting the raison d'être of this disc -- Boulez's Bartók -- it seems entirely appropriate to have three pianists play these three very different concertos . . . three pianists is an equally admirable solution. (Record Review / James H. North, Fanfare (Tenafly, NJ) / 01. July 2005)

 

As this wonderful new CD shows, the mesmerising clarity is still there . . . and there's a welcome flexibility in the rhythm. But the thing that really strikes you is the sheer beauty of the sound . . . And the three soloists - Zimerman, Andsnes and Grimaud - are all marvellous. (Record Review / Ivan Hewett, Times/Eye / 19. February 2005)

Hélène Grimaud PERSPECTIVES

She could be called a Renaissance woman for our times. Hélène Grimaud is not just a deeply passionate and committed musical artist whose pianistic accomplishments play a central role in her life. She is a woman with multiple talents that extend far beyond the instrument she plays with such poetic expression and peerless technical control. The French artist has established herself as a committed wildlife conservationist, a compassionate human rights activist and as a writer.

The word ‘perspective’ has a Latin root that means ‘to look through’. It is a word that readily applies to Hélène Grimaud’s way of making music and conceiving programs. She never plays a piece simply for the sake of playing it. She ‘looks through’ a composition, scrutinizing its components, its implications, its ambiguities, its position within that particular composer’s output, its commonalities with other like-minded works, and its tactile, spiritual and emotional resonances. For Grimaud, this collection is a retrospective offering new perspectives through a very personal choice of repertoire which creates enlightening new echoes between works. From Bach to Rachmaninov, Mozart to Chopin, Grimaud’s own selection of highlights from her albums reflects her artistic journey through the piano’s most famous solo and concerto repertoire in a series of interpretations that never fail to offer new perspectives on even the most familiar music – to be released in April!

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra / Daniel Barenboim HOMMAGE À BOULEZ

The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and co-founder Daniel Barenboim release Hommage à Boulez, a tribute to longtime collaborator Pierre Boulez. The album features a selection of the composer/conductor’s most iconic works.

The recording captures two live performances, at Boulez’s 85th birthday celebration in 2010 and at the BBC Proms in 2012. Barenboim conducts the Divan, and Boulez leads members of the orchestra alongside Hilary Summers in his Le Marteau sans maître.

Boulez was the first musician invited by Barenboim to share in conducting the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

Boulez / Tetzlaff / Uchida / Ensemble InterContemporain MOZART 13 BERG

As far as can be determined by perusing the international catalogs, this 2008 Decca disc contains post-modernist composer/conductor Pierre Boulez's first recording of a work by high classical composer/performer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Boulez's choice of repertoire is unusual to say the least: neither a symphony nor a piano concerto, but rather a serenade, to be specific, the Gran Partita for 13 wind instruments. One could understand a symphony, possibly the contrapuntal 41st, or a piano concerto, perhaps the driving 20th, but a serenade, a piece of light music designed for entertainment? Could anything seem further from Boulez's post-modernist aesthetic? 

The program makes more sense in context of the coupling: Berg's Chamber Concerto. Both works are by Viennese composers -- Berg was born and died there, Mozart moved there and died -- and both call for the unusual ensemble of 13 wind instruments. But the distance between the two pieces is still vast. To start with, the forms are entirely different: Mozart's work is full of solos drawn from within the ensemble, while Berg's is a true concerto with a pianist and violin soloists taking the lead. More fundamentally, Mozart's is an enormously delightful and occasionally affecting tonal work while Berg's is immensely challenging and only occasionally overtly appealing serial work. 

Inevitably, then, one is more curious about Boulez's Mozart than his Berg and more confident about his Berg than his Mozart, and, unsurprisingly, Boulez's approach is arguably more successful in the Berg than in the Mozart. Leading his superbly trained Ensemble InterContemporain, Boulez's Gran Partita is cool, clear, analytical, and, as often as not, a bit on the quick side. Thanks to Boulez's superlative ears and crisp technique, everything is absolutely audible and, thanks to the Paris-based chamber orchestra's first-class playing, everything is ideally executed. Listeners looking for elegance and warmth might want to look elsewhere, but listeners who value clarity and lucidity above all may find Boulez's Gran Partita reading rewarding. 

As expected, Boulez's Berg is much more successful, partially due to his excellent choices in soloists, pianist Mitsuko Uchida and violinist Christian Tetzlaff, and partially due to Boulez's unsurpassed understanding of Berg's musical language. As with his Mozart, everything is absolutely audible and ideally executed, but unlike his Mozart, Boulez and his players sound much more committed to the music and Berg's concerto comes off as much more touching than his Mozart Serenade. Beautifully recorded by Decca, this disc may please some of the people some of the time and displease the rest of the people the rest of the time, but it seems unlikely to please all of the people all of the time. (James Leonard)

LSO / Pierre Boulez / Klangforum Wien / Emilio Pomàrico OLGA NEUWIRTH Clinamen / Nodus - Construction in Space

Olga Neuwirth 's faible for grotesque themes and her occasional vegetative proliferation of pieces ensured her a permanent place in the repertoire. As brilliant growths of an undomesticated artist.

Many-facetted, vigorously arranged scores with the most heterogeneous influences and styles, far remote from any of the false glamour characteristic of postmodernity. With the conductor Pierre Boulez she has found herself a genuine ally. (Wolfgang Fuhrmann)

Pierre Boulez WEBERN Complete Works

The complete recording of Anton Webern's output just released by Deutsche Grammophon does very much more than refute old and sterile arguments against serialism. But that it does, and overwhelmingly. Webern -- always a close observer of his teacher Schoenberg, though, as an essentially lyrical composer, thoroughly independent -- took up Schoenberg's new serial technique in 1924 and never looked back. For the rest of his life, 21 years, he went on delighting in the opportunities serialism presented for making patterns: patterns like those of the snowflakes, flowers and crystals he admired in the Austrian mountains, patterns that would support his music's exquisite strains of melody and be supported by them.

He was making patterns with the past, too. Serialism reinvigorated for him the standard forms, especially variations and canon. And it brought him closer to the old masters. Starting with his Symphony (1927-28), most of his movements are canons of one kind or another, often allowing an expressive gesture to be answered, balanced and pinpointed by a copy moving in the other direction, a lift by a sigh, along the course of a regularly waving rhythm.

Canonic and variation forms were also outcomes of a quest for integration, for creating music in which a motif of three or four notes would be constantly present in different colorings, registrations and rhythmic placements. Hence the paradox that the music feels, expressively, so fragile that it might fall apart if one put a finger on it and yet, structurally, it is tightly made and reinforced in every direction. It is at once tender and tough.

As for links with predecessors, that same symphony, although it has just two movements, is scored for chamber orchestra and lasts less than 10 minutes, has something of the grand melodic sweep Webern admired in Bruckner. The concerto that came soon after is a modern ''Brandenburg,'' and Bach is invoked again in the two cantatas on spiritual themes that came near the end of Webern's life.

At the same time, Webern outfaced his nostalgia by resolute adherence to the new means he had devised for himself, with cues from Schoenberg, and by steady exploration of their possibilities. He never worried that his music, in essential respects, sounded quite unlike anything that had come before or was being written around him. He just went on, with exemplary persistence. He had no way of knowing that the vacuum in which he worked would rapidly be filled after his death, not least by Stravinsky, who learned a lot from his music in the 1950's, but also by many younger composers.

Among the eager Webernians then was Pierre Boulez, who returns to be the mastermind of the new recordings, just as he was 30 years ago for a set made by CBS, now available on CD from Sony Classical. But there are differences. One is that the new box (Deutsche Grammophon 457 637-2; six CD's) is twice as large, including many works Webern withheld from publication.

Some of these are juvenilia, imparting the unsurprising news that the composer at 16 was a talented, hopeful, somewhat incompetent beginner. His later rejects, though, include wonderful pieces, especially among the songs and instrumental movements he wrote in 1913 and 1914. During that period he gave thought to a sequence of orchestral pieces, some with solo soprano, rather in the manner of a distilled Mahler symphony. There might have been a similar string quartet with voice. Much later, though, Webern decided to issue sets of purely instrumental movements: the Six Bagatelles (Op. 9) for string quartet and the Five Pieces (Op. 10) for orchestra.

This left out of account not only the song movements -- two with orchestra and the one with quartet are breathtaking -- but also quite a number of orchestral movements. Mr. Boulez includes five, and two extra bagatelles.

A CD player can be programmed to present, say, Opus 9 followed by the two unselected bagatelles and, to end, the song with quartet, which not only provides a passionate slow finale but also leaves a clue to the music's expressive core, in a sense of grief and loss. Similarly, one can reconstruct a vocal symphony, which would have to include an alarming brassy piece (No. 3 among the additional orchestral movements) and the magical setting of a Stefan George poem, with its delicious spot for voice and percussion, and its penultimate gesture of a huge rise from the singer on the word ''holy.''

These and many other pieces sound, here, marvelous to perform. All the string quartets and trios are played by the Emerson String Quartet, which, strong and expressive, makes every little miniature sound big. Nearly all the songs, and the soprano parts in the cantatas, are sung by Christiane Oelze, for whom the music seems to have been waiting. Defying gravity, Ms. Oelze moves with ease through the enormous pitch intervals Webern loved and makes them beautiful and true, keen points in the continuing phrase and markers of exaltation or anguish.

Her contributions include, happily, all the songs with piano, which again embrace remarkable items Webern did not publish: the Five Dehmel Lieder of 1906-8, right on the bright moonlit borders of atonality; and 4 George songs from the next year, in addition to the 10 published as Opuses 3 and 4. Webern changed his mind about the planning of these cycles, eventually deciding that each should have an introduction followed by four songs in which the singing persona's feelings are reflected in nature (Op. 3) or in a tragic relationship (Op. 4). The numbers thus omitted are well worth hearing, especially when sung so well -- and played so well, by Eric Schneider.

Among other exceptional pianists at work here are Pierre-Laurent Aimard, in the quartet with saxophone and the concerto, and Krystian Zimerman, in the Variations (Op. 27) and two other pieces. Mr. Zimerman gives a beautiful account of the variations: the finale, highly effective, has wide-spanning melodies, often violent and gentle in the same breath, searching in a musical space that comes to be defined by chord resonances in the background.

But of course the performer who figures most prominently and comprehensively is Mr. Boulez, as conductor. To an astonishing degree, his tempos are close to those of his earlier recordings. Yet consistency of timing is deceptive, for within identical spans a lot has changed. Mr. Boulez is working here with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Ensemble Intercontemporain: musicians who have a much fuller appreciation than anyone did three decades ago of Webern's flow, dependent on subtle phrasing and a chamber-musical responsiveness of one player or section to another.

Where, for instance, the arrangement Webern made of the six-part ricercar from Bach's ''Musical Offering'' almost fell apart in the 1969 London Symphony recording, the new version is secure and even imposing. The earlier performances of the original works often sound scrappy and preliminary, and though the first clarinet in the symphony achieves some suavity in rather torn textures, the same part emerges in the later recording far more gorgeous and sensitive.

Inevitably, there are losses as well. The spikiness Mr. Boulez found in this repertory when he was in his mid-40's was not just a result of unconsidered playing: it came from a conviction that the music was fierce and that it mattered. Witness, for example, the swing between aggressiveness and recuperation in the second movement of the symphony, or the way the choral women in the third movement of the Second Cantata seem to sing with teeth bared, like Valkyries. These moments are more beautiful in the later recordings but not necessarily more exciting.

There are also performances in the earlier set that will not be supplanted, like the account of the two Rilke poems, with Heather Harper, or the many appearances of another soprano, Halina Lukomska, whose flaming voice is so different from Ms. Oelze's but equally apt.

Something else has happened to Webern during the last three decades: we know far more about his life, and about his opinions, which were not all edifying. His pursuit of purity in his music -- of complete homogeneity and integration, of absolute precision in the minutest detail -- and the high value he placed on German culture led him, crazily and dismayingly, to consider that his ideals were shared by the Third Reich.

He was not an anti-Semite. Indeed, he helped conceal Jews in Vienna. But he seems to have thought that Hitler was some kind of agent of spiritual regeneration, and that the spreading Nazi conquests of 1939 to 1941 were all to the benefit of the nations overcome: this even though the annexation of Austria in 1938 had put an end to his activity as a conductor and to any hopes he had of hearing his music again, other than in neutral Switzerland. The Nazis closed his public career. And yet, privately, he applauded them.

Knowing this, we might want to listen to the Variations for orchestra of 1940 a little more carefully and a little more critically: to pay less attention, perhaps, to the coherence and symmetry the music so ostentatiously exhibits than to the delicacy, strangeness and variety of its component parts, and even to insist, contra Webern, on multiplicity and ambiguity as essential elements in his art.

More useful, too, than dismissing him for his foolish views would be to learn from his example of magnificent but, in crucial respects, misaligned idealism. Snowflakes and flowers are all very well, and we need them, but their rules arCDe not those of politics. (Paul Griffiths / The New York Times)

CD 1 / CD 2 / CD 3 / CD 4 / CD 5 / CD 6

PIERRE BOULEZ (1925 -2016) Complete Works

More than anyone else’s, Pierre Boulez’s oeuvre has not known completion and never will. Doubtless like so many creators – and not the least important –, he undertakes projects that, without any particular explanation, he will not follow up on. In the ‘unfinished’ category, for instance, appears a score he had planned to write for Les Percussions de Strasbourg, of which we are mentioning the idea only for the record. But in an approach of which there are few equivalents in the history of music, Pierre Boulez considers each of his works like the exploitation of a material, from which arise, in the course of an unpredictable but carefully controlled proliferation of new compositions or, more precisely, new versions of a composition that, in the final analysis, and for a given, immeasurable time, will have been only the kernel of the final piece. This is less a matter of alterations, expressing doubts or regrets, reactions that are hardly Boulezian, than the pursuit of work that, even if resulting in public performances (and such has often been the case), preserves its potentialities, so many stages before – the material deemed exhausted – the recognition of paternity of a definitive piece at last.

The present set is therefore itself testimony to a particular compositional process, the inventory of a body in the process of edification, in which certain, perfectly closed opuses are inscribed, and at the highest level, in the repertoire of contemporary musical creation whereas others, already noticed by commentators, are relegated to a sort of antechamber, the exploration of which requires the greatest patience.

This set also gives the idea of a shattered chronology, unlike the classic catalogue of a musician organizing the various pieces in his development one after another. Examples abound: thus Livre pour quatuor, for which Pierre Boulez imagined the succession of six movements back in 1948. A first, partial performance took place in 1955, and then, in this year 2012, he composed one of the missing movements. Detachable pages, in a way, for which Boulez took Mallarmé as a model. Consequently, the usage of this set, work by work in the hopes of detecting an itinerary, is totally utopian, except that the Boulezian corpus, albeit manifold, is homogeneous in its references, coherent through its different models, also progressive, from the rigours of an initial post-Webernian period up to the flexibility – fantasy? – of writing that is no less precise but somehow liberated. 

Missing links? Boulez wants to turn over only finished works or parts of works to the public. The programme of this set reflects the Boulezian corpus as ‘work in progress’. 

Finally, the recordings, chosen in agreement with the, composer attest to a real-time interpretation, if we might say so. Foundations of a tradition on which future generations will be able to nurture themselves without being condemned, for all that, to strict observance, which would contravene all that the Boulezian philosophy has taught us. The composer provides the example; his practice of conducting, his frequenting classical composers, his thinking about his own approach, the (relative) flexibility of his own scores, and the abilities of a new generation of performers commit him to new perspectives; beyond the word-by- word of the notes: more flexibility, differentiation in sound and clarity. The confrontation of the two recordings of Le Marteau sans maître proposed in this set, recordings made some forty years apart, supply the proof. In this area, nothing is definitive. But now, in addition to the pleasure of listening, knowledge of such period documents is particularly enlightening. It stimulates the listener’s thinking as much as the commentator’s and indicates fruitful paths to performers that simple faithfulness to a tradition would be unable to satisfy. 

‘Every work is ambiguous: attached to the past, oriented towards the future. What is important to me,’ says Boulez, ‘is its current contribution.’ A limited, but nonetheless demanding, ambition. (Claude Samuel)
CD 1 - 3 / CD 4 - 6 / CD 7 - 9 / CD 10 - 13

Carolin Widmann REFLECTIONS

Music for solo violin is still mainly associated with Bach in the eighteenth century and Paganini in the nineteenth. Carolin Widmann, the distinguished German violinist, here provides a varied and vivid survey of such music from the twentieth century, from Ysaÿe in the 1920s to Jörg Widmann (her composer brother) at the turn of the millennium. There is nothing at all in the CD booklet about any of these pieces, though they are unlikely to be at all familiar to most collectors. I describe them below, partly because you need this information for a proper appreciation of the range of what is on offer on this disc, and partly in hope that it might pique your curiosity. 

Ysaÿe’s Six sonatas for solo violin, Op. 27, were written in 1923. Each one is dedicated to one of his contemporary violinists, No. 2 to Jacques Thibaud, and No. 4 to Fritz Kreisler. If that was a shrewd way to encourage world-class performances, one hopes it worked, for they are fine works and by no means unworthy of their Bachian inheritance. Indeed No. 2 actually opens with some Bach, the famously arresting first phrase of the E minor partita, no less. However, it is the plainchant Dies Irae that informs much of the work, including the noble variations of the Sarabande. Sonata No. 4 is hardly less compelling, and both are very well played indeed. 

If those sonatas are a homage to Bach, then another set of six, the Sei Capricci (1976) of Salvatore Sciarrino, pay homage to the 24 Caprices of his compatriot and forbear Niccolo Paganini. Each capriccio uses almost entirely the least substantial of all string sounds - harmonics. This includes some harmonics that – apparently – do not exist, since they do not lie on any of the nodes along the string that produce the overtones. They are notated and attempted nonetheless, and the sonic result is part of the soundscape. This near exclusive use of harmonics – normally an occasional coloristic effect – means every piece is filled with ethereal, whistling wisps of sound, evoking a world of shadows, as if some revenant from the great days of Ysaÿe and his dedicatees was playing for us, but his spectral status meant he could produce only a disembodied sound. Eerie it might be, but Widmann’s performance again makes us forget the incredible technical demands this music must make on the performer. 

Pierre Boulez’s Anthèmes was commissioned for the 1991 Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition. The title is a hybrid of the French thèmes (themes) and the English "anthem". The four pages of score (free to download) employ a formidable-looking range of tempi (lent to rapide), expression marks (calme, agité, brusque), dynamics (pppp -fff) and very frequent metrical changes, all punctuated by frequent long trills and glissandi. Widmann manages to observe all this scrupulously, and in so doing, show us that it is a fine piece, by no means as challenging to listen to as it must be to play. Small wonder it is one of those pieces Boulez - as so often - expanded and developed further, as Anthèmes 2 for violin and live electronics. 

Jörg Widmann's solo violin Études I-III are autonomous concert pieces — premiered separately in 1995, 2001 and 2003. The composer wrote of them: “‘Étude' is taken literally here as a compositional exercise … but also as a violinistic study on a certain playing technique: for example, I is some sort of 'sounding out' of the instrument's resonance possibilities, II goes on a journey from a three-part chorale to spirited, unbridled virtuosity, and III is mainly a left-hand étude.' He, perhaps mischievously, does not remark on the element that will strike most listeners to Etude II – one line of the three-part chorale he mentions is for the violinist’s wordless voice. One would like to know what Isabelle Faust — dedicatee and first performer — made of that when she first encountered it, let alone its first audience at the 1995 Cheltenham Festival. The effect is certainly evocative here. Presumably we can take for granted the authenticity of the performance by the composer’s sister and dedicatee and first performer of Étude III, who even contributed the recommended fingering to the score. By the way, Schott’s website has this helpful note for prospective purchasers of the score “Difficulty: Very Difficult”. The only possible criticism of the performer on this CD is that she never makes it sound like that. 

Ysaÿe once wrote that a performer on his instrument "must be a violinist, a thinker, a poet, a human being, he must have known hope, love, passion and despair, he must have run the gamut of the emotions in order to express them all in his playing." I have no idea if Carolin Widmann has experienced all that in her life to date, but surely Ysaÿe would have applauded such virtuosity and expressive range – the playing is often frankly sensational. This recording was first published in 2006 on Telos, and won an award in Germany. It was Widmann’s debut disc, and as a solo violin calling card from a young player it recalls Perlman’s EMI Paganini Caprices from 1972. Its reissue is greatly to be celebrated. (Roy Westbrook)

Pierre Boulez / Ensemble intercontemporain PHILIPPE MANOURY La Partition du Ciel et de l'Enfer - Jupiter

Philippe Manoury is one of the world's leading composers and computer music researchers. He studied composition with Gerard CondZ and Max Deutsch (one of Schoenberg's first students in Vienna), and at the Conservatoire National de Musique de Paris, with Michel Philippot and Ivo Malec. He studied computer-assisted composition with Pierre Barbaud beginning in 1976.

In 1978, Philippe began teaching in Brazil at universities in Sao Paulo, Brasilia, and other locations. A major appointment followed at the Conservatoire National SupZrieur de Lyon (1986-96). Most significant is his long association with the world's leading center for computer music research, IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), a branch of the Centre George Pompidou in Paris. Philippe has worked as a musical researcher (in collaboration with Miller Puckette) since 1981, and as a Professor of Composition since 1993. At IRCAM Manoury composed Zeitlauf (1981), a work for mixed choir, instrumental ensemble, synthesizers, and tape.

For the European Year of Music, the Council of Europe commissioned Manoury to compose Aleph, which premiered in 1985. He also wrote a series of chamber works, including Musique I and II, and InstantanZs. In 1992 and 1993 he composed La Nuit du Sortilège, which won an award from the UNESCO International Composers' Tribune. In 1999, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland commissioned Sound and Fury, premiered by Pierre Boulez.

Philippe has composed three operas, 60e Parallèle, K..., and La Frontière. K... was commissioned and premiered by the Paris Opera in 2001. One of his most important works is Sonus ex Machina, a series of compositions (Jupiter, Pluton, Neptune and La Partition du Ciel et de l'Enfer) for solo instruments, ensemble and real-time computer processing. Mr. Manoury was also composer in residence at the Orchestre de Paris where he composed Noon, a large piece for soprano, choir, orchestra and electronics. It was premiered by Esa-Pekka Salonen.

In 2005, Philippe composed IdentitZs remarquables and Strange Ritual for the Ensemble Intercontemporain and the Modern Ensemble. Recently, Mr. Manoury premiered On-Iron, a 75-minute oratorio for choir, percussion, electronics and video which toured five cities in France.

Mr. Manoury will have an immediate impact on our composition, computer music, and ICAM (computer music) programs. He will be available as a senior mentor to Ph.D. candidates in composition, teach the Music 203 composition seminar, 103 undergraduate composition seminar, 270 computer music seminars, and 210 musical analysis. (UC San Diego)