Pierre Boulez At 100 Honored In Concerts Writ Large And Small

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Soprano Jana McIntyre was soloist in Pierre Boulez’s ‘Pli selon pli‘ with members of the New York Philharmonic under David Robertson. (Photo by Brandon Patoc)

NEW YORK — Not until composer-conductor Pierre Boulez’s 100th-birthday year (2025) did one realize how complicated it is to commemorate. Of course it’s complicated. It’s Boulez — though not nearly as intricate as expected in two New York concerts on consecutive days (Jan. 24 and 25) that spanned his creative life from the original 1945 Notations in a concert by Brooklyn’s Talea Ensemble to his compositional peak with excerpts from Pli selon sli with the New York Philharmonic under David Robertson.

Both were well-prepared, authoritative presentations. Beyond Boulez’s compositions, his influence was explored with the Philharmonic reprising one of his unorthodox programs (Schubert Symphony No. 2 paired with Webern’s Symphony, Op. 21) and Talea showing his influence on electronic music. And here’s the revelation: The more one knows Boulez, the less complicated he becomes.

Pianist Steven Beck played Boulez’s ‘Notations.’

Though often mentioned in the same breath as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Boulez was always more approachable and has turned out to be more durable, thanks to his distinctively French attention to sound. And while Stockhausen veered into conceptual art with magic spells, helicopters, etc., Boulez was always a composer of music and one without pretensions of being extraterrestrial.

In fact, the older Boulez tempered his public persona with a mask of bemused gentility. Did he have household pets? (Unknown.) A loved one? (It seems so.) A guilty pleasure? (Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten.) Privately, his sharp tongue remained. His ultimate putdown of a bad piece was, “It is less than nothing.”

Following Boulez’s musical train of thought wasn’t daunting at the Jan. 24 Talea concert at the Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew in Brooklyn. Some pianists play the 12 Notations emphasizing the music’s forward-looking elements, what some detractors might describe as post-Webern popcorn music that, despite itself, reveals the music’s debts to two composers Boulez turned against, Arnold Schoenberg and Olivier Messiaen.

Abstraction was still part of Steven Beck’s reading at the Talea concert, though more often these short pieces were distilled to an interplay of a few well-crystallized ideas. Serial composing techniques tell us that all notes are created equal, but Beck shaped them into meaningful gestures. This didn’t diminish the pieces but seemed to get to the core of what separated the music from that of Boulez’s contemporaries.

The 1984 Dialogues de l’ombre double — heard in the bassoon version, played by Adrian Morejon — is clearly divided into a series of “strophes,” a word usually applied to song structure. When heard in that spirit, the piece’s distinct sections emerge. The electronic element, as the title suggests, acts as a shadow of sorts from a different realm (an aggressive ghost?) and creates its own kind of counterpoint to the live, linear instrument. Most arresting was a moment near the end when the live instrumentalist holds a long high note while the shadow version acts out with a freedom that’s possible only with atonality. And for those who thought Boulez was inflexible, the piece exists in versions for clarinet and saxophone.

Bassoonist Adrian Morejon performed Boulez’s ‘Dialogues de l’ombre double.’ (Photo by David Patrick Stearns)

Elsewhere at the Talea concert, John Cage threatened to walk off with the evening: His 1985 Ryoanji had oboist Michelle Farrah positioned at various points in the room playing all manner of squalky extended techniques with stark percussive electronic blows that hit irregularly, every one to five seconds. However, the piece wore out its welcome — and then some — causing one listener to call it a “duet for cat and New York radiator.”

Different revelations were in store across the river at Lincoln Center on Jan. 25. The “Improvisations I and II sur Mallarmé” from Pli selon pli once sent audiences streaming toward the exits in the spirit of a fire drill. But not in 2025. Soprano Jana McIntyre didn’t just sing well but also was cognitively brilliant, not just with her shading of the constantly morphing, luxuriously oblique Stéphane Mallarmé French Symbolist text but in how Boulez projected it. But has the overall piece ever felt more direct with the vocal line framed by such iridescent instrumental colors?

Well, among the many versions of Pli selon pli, the chamber version for seven musicians was used, in contrast to the 30 employed by some versions of the piece. Hail to conductor Robertson for choosing it. And for being game for the rest of the program, which recreated one of Boulez’s famous “rug concerts” during his controversial tenure as New York Philharmonic music director (1971-77).

As part of the New York Philharmonic’s Boulez concert, David Robertson led a performance of Stravinsky’s suite from ‘The Soldier’s Tale.’

It was perversely diverse. Bach, represented by his Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, goes with anything (and was quite well played), even next to Schubert’s exuberantly overwritten Symphony No. 2. Was the idea to make Webern’s compressed Symphony (with variations you’ll miss if you blink) seem elegant in comparison? In any case, Webern came off tentative and quiet. No Second Viennese School composer is harder to pull off.

After the Boulez “Improvisations,” though, came Stravinsky’s suite from The Soldier’s Tale. Who knows what Boulez was thinking? A piece of candy for listeners who made it to the end? After Webern and his own constantly unfolding music, Stravinsky seemed redundant in his storytelling and consideration for giving the dancers stage time. The performance didn’t seem all that committed, though violinist Sheryl Staples was a constant beacon, alive to all details of Stravinsky’s nimble, witty characterizations.