Coming up: Some musical memories of Pierre Boulez

BBC Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Boulez, cond. Live performance, 1970

Vienna Philharmonic, Pierre Boulez, cond. DG, recorded March 1996

by Ken

Once upon a time, probably nobody would have been more surprised than Pierre Boulez to think of himself as an eventual recipient of a traditional Mahlerian sendoff like the Adagietto from the Fifth Symphony. In fact, over the quarter-century that separates these two performances, I think we can hear his own relationship to the music evolving. But even the quicker earlier one has a ring of sincerity that's surprising coming from the man who, in his Domaine Musical days (which in fact hadn't ended yet), inveighed so polemically against music . . . well, music pretty much like this.

We're not going to go very deep in the full post, but I thought it would tell us something just to rehear some musical memories of Boulez -- some of the Boulez performances we've already heard over the years at Sunday Classics over the years, with some selective augmentations. More anon.

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