Pierre Boulez one of the C20's most influential conductor/composers died yesterday aged 90.
He even embraced Frank Zappa- The Perfect Stranger
Cellist Caroline Stinson recounts working with the maestro (20.30 minutes in)
Admittedly there is a fair amount of unintentionally 'plinkety-plonk' contemporary music. If you are not necessarily a fan of contemporary classical music, what is remarkable- if not extra-ordinary, is just how mesmerizing a sound world is sculpted by many Boulez compositions. “Inspiring the young about the music of the future,” according to one young conductor. It may not always be breakfast music but Boulez sure makes your brain lively and/or meditative late at night BBC Radio 3 page devoted to Boulez
As a perverse final thought: what if a highly musical ‘alien’ who knew nothing of earth’s musical history were going though his/her ‘Dad’s earthly library of compositions (as if an Amy Schumer film;). It would be hard to imagine our ‘alien’ wouldn’t put to one side (even only to sell on interstellar ebay) Boulez alongside the works from the 40s/50s of Messian, Varese, Ligeti and Stockhausen (Gesang der Jünglinge). Boulez wrote many of his influential works by the age of 30! An he still had 60 years to go.
Nothing anal or enem-atic about Boulez. More ginseng.
Hasta la vista...maestro
a segue if ever there was one (and if you wish there to be one): The Danish Girl is on general cinema release- for the first 20 minutes or so it seems like a regular costume drama but there's a very long sting in a short tail.
the world, perhaps, really
: is beautiful...if very,very,very,very strange.
Conductor Sir Simon Rattle and director Peter Sellars collaborate on Debussy's Pelleas and Melisande (Sellars speaks passionately on BBC's In Tune)
