Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez, who makes his MET Orchestra debut this afternoon, can look back on nearly six decades of activity in music making. His first compositions date to the mid-1940s, when he had recently emerged from studies with Olivier Messiaen in Paris. He also studied with René Leibowitz, who introduced him to 12-tone composition. His Second Piano Sonata (1947–1948) marked his creative coming of age.
An examination of the basic elements of music was his next step. In the first section of his Structures I for two pianos (1951–1952), he attempted to make rhythmic values, loudness, and nuances of touch obey serial principles. He then returned to larger issues in the later part of this work and in Le Marteau sans maître for contralto and mixed sextet (1953–1955). A further opening-out produced Pli selon Pli (1957–1962), a musical portrait of the poet Mallarmé for an orchestra rich in percussion and a soprano soloist.
In the late 1950s, Mr. Boulez began appearing more frequently as a conductor, and by the end of the 1960s he had conducted Wagner in Bayreuth, Beethoven in London, and Machaut in Los Angeles. In 1971, he became music director of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, posts he held until 1975 and 1977, respectively. During this same period, he composed Eclat/Multiples (begun in 1965, it is one of his unfinished projects) and Rituel (1974–1975). In the mid-1970s, he founded IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique; the Institute for Research and Coordination Acoustic/Music). There his contacts with computer technicians and musicians influenced his composition of Répons and ... explosante-fixe ....
Mr. Boulez has since conducted worldwide tours with the London Symphony Orchestra celebrating his 70th, 75th, and 80th birthdays; new productions of Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron with Peter Stein; Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle with Pina Bausch; a Falla–Stravinsky–Schoenberg production staged by Klaus Michael Grüber; and Parsifal in a staging by Christoph Schlingensief at the Bayreuth Festival in 2004 and 2005. Two years later, he collaborated with Patrice Chéreau on Janáček’s From the House of the Dead in Vienna, Amsterdam, and at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Last season, he joined Daniel Barenboim to conduct Mahler’s complete symphonic works at Carnegie Hall. Mr. Boulez began his 85th birthday year with extensive tours to Chicago, New York, Cleveland, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin. Currently Composer-in-Residence at the Mozartwoche in Salzburg, he has also served as The Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall, and is Conductor Emeritus of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Among his most recent compositions are Incises, sur Incises, Anthèmes 2, Notations VII, and
Dérive 2.
The MET Orchestra
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra is regarded as one of the world’s finest orchestras. From the time of the company’s inception in 1883, the ensemble has worked with leading conductors in both opera and concert performances and has developed into an orchestra of enormous technical polish and style.
The MET Orchestra maintains a demanding schedule of performances and rehearsals during its 32-week New York season, when the company performs seven times a week in repertory that normally encompasses approximately 27 operas.
Arturo Toscanini conducted almost 500 performances at the Met, and Gustav Mahler, during the few years he was in New York, conducted 54 Met performances. More recently, many of the world’s great conductors have led the orchestra: Walter, Beecham, Reiner, Mitropoulos, Kempe, Szell, Böhm, Solti, Maazel, Bernstein, Mehta, Abbado, Karajan, Dohnányi, Haitink, Tennstedt, Ozawa, Gergiev, and Barenboim. Carlos Kleiber’s only US opera performances were with the MET Orchestra.
In addition to its opera schedule, the orchestra has a distinguished history of concert performances. Toscanini made his American debut as a symphonic conductor with the Met Orchestra in 1913, and the impressive list of instrumental soloists who appeared with the orchestra includes Leopold Godowsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arthur Rubinstein, Pablo Casals, Josef Hofmann, Ferruccio Busoni, Jascha Heifetz, Moritz Rosenthal, and Fritz Kreisler. Since the orchestra resumed symphonic concerts in 1991, instrumental soloists have included Itzhak Perlman, Maxim Vengerov, Alfred Brendel, and Evgeny Kissin, and the group has performed four world premieres: Babbitt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (1998), Bolcom’s Symphony No. 7 (2002), Shen’s Legend (2002), and Wuorinen’s Theologoumenon (2007).
The orchestra’s high standing led to its first commercial recordings in nearly 20 years: Wagner’s complete Ring cycle, conducted by James Levine. Recorded by Deutsche Grammophon over a period of three years, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, and Götterdämmerung were winners of an unprecedented three consecutive Grammy Awards in 1989, 1990, and 1991 for Best Opera Recording. Other recordings under Maestro Levine include L’elisir d’amore, Idomeneo, Le nozze di Figaro, Der fliegende Holländer, Parsifal, Erwartung, Manon Lescaut, and seven Verdi operas. Maestro Levine has also led the orchestra for recordings of Wagner overtures, Verdi ballet music, an all-Berg disc with Renée Fleming, and aria albums with Bryn Terfel, Kathleen Battle, and Ms. Fleming. The orchestra’s first symphonic recordings are pairings of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition with Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps; Beethoven’s “Eroica” with Schubert’s “Unfinished” symphonies; and Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote and Tod und Verklärung.
In spring 1991 the orchestra, under the leadership of Maestro Levine, began concert touring. They have since traveled across the US and to Europe (including their debut at the Salzburg Festival in 2002), as well as annually to Carnegie Hall. In spring 2006 the company returned to Japan for its fifth tour there in 18 years.
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