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Miller Theatre Honors Pierre Boulez’s 85th Birthday with Composer Portrait Concert

Nov. 30, 2010

On December 6 the Talea Ensemble and conductor James Baker perform five pieces by Pierre Boulez at Miller Theatre as the latest installment of Miller's Composer Portrait series. As one of the most influential and groundbreaking musicians of our time, Boulez is paid tribute to with a program that spans over 60 years of his life reflecting his wide array of accomplishments; Notations (1945), Improvisation I (1957), Improvisation II (1957), Dérive I (1984) and Dérive II (1988/2006), in its US premiere.

Boulez composed Notations at age 19 during his last year as a student of Olivier Messiaen and René Leibowitz at the Conservatoire. He spent considerable time reflecting upon and varying these 12 pieces for over 30 years after their original composition. Paul Griffiths summarizes the piece’s character as one of “resonant sonorities and abrupt gestures, their alternation between suppleness and intense stampede, and, not least, their dialectic between fixity and explosiveness.” His Improvisation I and II are set to two poems by Mallarmé, scored for soprano and a unique array of percussion instruments. Within each Improvisation Boulez quotes Notations, creating a series of interludes from the original work.

Dérive I reflects upon another stage of Boulez’ compositional life, using a set of six chords from his first piece featuring computer music, Répons. The piece is scored for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion, instrumentation he derived from Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire. Dérive II expands upon the idea of derivation as a catalogue of fragments based on the same six chords of Dérive I. However, Dérive II contains considerably different instrumentation. Boulez reworked the piece and almost doubled its length prior to 2006.

Boulez's performance schedule in the US this month also includes his leading The Chicago Symphony Orchestra in their performances of Janácek's Glagolitic Mass and Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night on December 2-4.

For more information on upcoming performances at Miller Theatre, please visit www.millertheatre.com.

Detailed information on the composer's life and work can be found at www.universaledition.com.

Pierre Boulez
12 Notations (1945)
for piano
10'

Improvisation I (1957)
for soprano and 7 instrumentalists (original version)
perc(4), vib, t.bells, hp
6'

Improvisation II (1957)
for soprano and 9 instrumentalists
perc(4), vib, t.bells, hp, cel, pno
12'

Dérive I (1984)
for 6 instrumentalists
fl, cl(A), vib, pno, vln, vc 

Dérive II (1988/2006)
for 11 instrumentalists
c.a, cl, bsn, hn, mar, vib, hp, pno, vln(1), vla(1), vc(1)
45’

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