Boulez Conducts Zappa - The Perfect Stranger (1984)

 

Three fine examples of Zappa's writing for orchestra - in this case chamber orchestra, as Pierre Boulez in preparatory correspondence advised that he had Ensemble InterContemporain most closely to hand.  The Perfect Stranger (the album) is filled out by 14 minutes of Synclavier music (the "Barking Pumpkin Digital Gratification Consort" is simply Zappa at his new favourite instrument).  

 

In the longest ensemble piece and title track, the liner notes explain that "A door-to-door salesman, accompanied by his faithful gypsy-mutant industrial vacuum cleaner cavorts licentiously with a slovenly housewife."  A recent live version, conducted by Ivan Volkov, is in the links list below.  The other two Boulez/InterContemporain renditions are Naval Aviation In Art?, first attempted at the 1975 Royce Hall concerts, and an arrangement of the live-improv vehicle Dupree's Paradise (see YCDTOSA 2 for a nice meandering band example).

On the Synclavier, Zappa gives us the twinkling atonality of The Girl In The Magnesium Dress; the Joe's Garage track re-arrangement Outside Now Again; the minute-long note-bending exercise Love Story, and the suitably ominous Jonestown.  He'd later remaster the album in a new mix, different running order and with noticeably different Synclavier instrumentation on Magnesium Dress - this first-pressing CD matches the original vinyl.

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pw: sgtg

 

Frank Zappa at SGTG:

Lumpy Gravy

Waka/Jawaka

The Grand Wazoo

Roxy & Elsewhere

One Size Fits All

Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar

You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol. 2: The Helsinki Concert

The Perfect Stranger (live 2018)

Pierre Boulez / Ensemble InterContemporain etc - Sur Incises, Messagesquisse, Anthèmes 2 (2000)

Typically engrossing Boulez, both in composition and in production.  The main event on this album is the two part, 37 minute Sur Incises, based on Boulez's earlier solo piano piece Incises.  With the addition of two extra pianos, three harps and percussion instruments, the various sonorities and textures of the solo piano are blown out into an incredible macrocosm of sound.  Messagesquisse, a shorter work for cellos, provides an interlude and a bridge to the other substantial 'revision' on the album, Anthèmes 2.  On this one, a solo violin plays against recorded and electronically-manipulated violin parts to great atmospheric effect.  I always find Boulez fun to listen to, and the whole of this album just sounds wonderful.

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pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:

Le Marteau Sans Maître

Sonatine For Flute And Piano

La Visage Nuptial / Le Soleil Des Eaux (BBC Proms 2002)

Boulez Conducts Boulez (and Varèse and Stravinsky) (BBC Proms 2002)

Dug out this great archive concert as Boulez and Varèse seemed liked a good follow-up to Zappa.  Re-broadcast as one of the "Past Proms" last summer, this performance from August 2002 saw Pierre Boulez (1925-2016) reunited with the BBC SO: he was their conductor at various points in the 60s and 70s.

Edgard Varèse's Intégrales is the concert's curtain-raiser, with its sharp bursts of orchestration and percussion; a full overview of Varèse's music can be found at a previous post here.  The next two works are a "Boulez conducts Boulez" immersion: both date back to the 1940s (with various revisions since, including for this concert), and both are cantatas that use verse by French poet René Char.  The longer of the two is the five-section Le Visage Nuptial, with the soloist backed by a shimmering choir and twinkling percussion.  Le Soleil Des Eaux contrasts the summery, anthropomorhic romance of its flowing introduction with a more strident Char poem later on about protesting fishermen.  To end the concert, Boulez conducts the original score to Stravinsky's Petrushka in fine style.

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pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:

Le Marteau Sans Maître (also uses Char's poetry)

Sonatine For Flute And Piano

Masterworks Of The 20th Century 10xCD box set - posting now complete

Disc 1 - Pierre Boulez: Le Marteau Sans Maître/Livre Pour Cordes - posted here
Disc 2 - Toru Takemitsu: Asterism, Requiem, Green, Dorian Horizon - posted here
Disc 3 - Igor Stravinsky: Agon/Gunter Schuller: 7 Studies On Themes Of Paul Klee - posted here
Disc 4 - Charles Ives: The "Concord" Sonata - posted here
Disc 5 - George Crumb: Voice Of The Whale/Night Of The Four Moons etc - posted here
Disc 6 - Harry Partch: The World Of Harry Partch - posted here
Disc 7 - Extended Voices - posted here
Disc 8 - Xenakis, Del Tredici, Stockhausen, Cage, Crumb - posted here
Disc 9 - Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center - posted here
Disc 10 - The New Music, Volume 2 - see below.

"The New Music" was a short series by RCA Victrola, the first three of which were Italian recordings conducted by Bruno Maderna.  For the "Prophets Of The New" reissue series/the final disc in this box set, this CD presented all of Vol. 2 plus half of Vol. 3, spotlighting the legendary Italian flautist Severino Gazzelloni.

The first two tracks are chamber pieces that higlight the range of sonorities that Boulez and Haubenstock-Ramati could conjure up for flute, before a temporary switch in lead instrument gives us Maderna's Concerto for Oboe (played by Lothar Faber) and Chamber Orchestra.

Back with Gazzelloni for the tracks from The New Music Vol. 3, Y Su Sangre Ya Viene Cantando is the middle section of Luigi Nono's Epitaph For Lorca, with a definite Spanish tinge to its rhythmic orchestration.  Lastly, Berio's Serenade I for Flute & 14 Instruments is a great evolving dialogue between the soloist and other instruments.

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pw: sgtg

Iannis Xenakis - Phlegra, Jalons, Kern, Nomos Alpha, Thalleïn (rec. 1990/1, rel. 1992)

A great Xenakis disc from the early 90s, focusing on recent commissions taken on by the composer at a time when his music wasn't quite as earth-shattering as it had been earlier on, but could still bend 20th century classical music into extraordinary shapes.  The first piece here is one of the older two on the collection, Phlegra for chamber orchestra (1976), with plenty of ominous drones and great abraisive writing that was Xenakis' envisioning of "a battleground between the Titans and the new gods of Mount Olympus".  Following that is the slippery, trippy drift and skronk of Jalons for orchestra (1986), dedicated to Pierre Boulez, who conducts here.

Two solo pieces are up next.  Keren (1986), Hebrew for 'horn', was written for trombonist Benny Sluchin, who performs it here, taking the instrument from mellifluous solemnity to almost jazzy sounds, low drones and everywhere in between in under seven minutes.  The oldest piece on the collection, Nomos Alpha (1965) was originally written for the great cellist Siegfied Palm, and is briskly performed (about three minutes shorter than the original, IIRC) by Pierre Strauch.  For the geometrists out there, it's based on the "24-element octahedral group isomorphic to the rotations of a cube"; for anyone who just likes hearing a cello sound like it's being played by a virtuoso octopus, it's a blast.  We end with another chamber piece, Thallein (1984), for fourteen instruments including piano and percussion, written in complex polyphonic layers that still sound like music from the future.

link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Oresteïa
Synaphaï
Persephassa
Ata, Jonchaies etc
Pléiades/Psappha
Bohor etc
Kraanerg
Terretektorh/Nomos Gamma
La Légende D'Eer
Persepolis

Olivier Messiaen - Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum, etc (1988 compi, rec '66-'71)

Been trying to up my Messiaen (1908-1992) game lately, and found this great CD for £2.  Apparently it’s from a box set that was released in the composer’s 80th birthday year – love that digital timing on the cover, from the early heyday of the format! 

Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum (And I await the resurrection of the dead) from 1964 is the centrepiece here, and it’s one of Messiaen’s most striking and sombre orchestral works, being commissioned in memoriam of the dead of the World Wars.  Whether with ominous tolling bells and rattling percussion, or in the huge monolithic brass lines, approaching something like orchestral doom-metal, this is pure apocalypse and final judgement written large.  It’s paired on CD as it was on the 1966 LP with Couleurs De La Cité Céleste (1963), which is even more percussive, makes much of Messiaen’s concept of colours in sound, and an ideal companion to the main work.  Both were conducted by Pierre Boulez.

Slightly lighter in mood, and dating from 1934 (recorded here in 1971), L’Ascension is one of Messiaen’s earliest orchestral masterpieces to show the mystical, hallucinatory Catholicism at the heart of most of his output.  The final movement is something that’s particularly stuck on me since getting into the work; it truly is otherworldly.

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Pierre Boulez - Le marteau sans maître (1954; rec. 1972)

R.I.P. Pierre Boulez: 26 March 1925 - 5 January 2016

Sad to learn of Boulez's passing today, but a few months short of 91 years old is a good innings by any standards, and he leaves behind a great legacy of masterful conducting and some uniquely single-minded music.

I've been listening to this 1954 work a lot recently, trying to get a handle on the initially uninviting serialism.  I liked the instrumentation right from the start, which encouraged me to persevere with the work - Stravinsky famously likened it to "the sound of ice cubes clinking in a glass", which was all I could think of for a while when listening to it after reading that; it's a great metaphor.  You could perhaps extend that metaphor as far as becoming accustomed to this music being like ice cubes in a glass of single malt whisky - it's definitely an acquired taste, but one worth persevering with (or so I hear, as a non-drinker!).

Le marteau sans maître (The hammer without a master) takes as its text the surrealist poetry of René Char, sung against flute, guitar, vibes, viola and everyone's favourite percussion instrument, the xylorimba.  There's nothing quite like it, and it's well worth acquiring the taste.  This 1973 Columbia album (sourced from this box set, which I'll be returning to shortly for more posts) adds 'Livre pour Cordes', two forms of a short work for strings that makes for a nice palate cleanser.

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