Pierre Boulez - Boulez As A Conductor

Boulez As A Conductor

Boulez is also a conductor, known the world over having directed most of the world's leading symphony orchestras and ensembles since the late fifties. He served concurrently as musical advisor of the Cleveland Orchestra from 1970 to 1972, chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1971 to 1975, and music director of the New York Philharmonic from 1971 to 1977. He is currently the Conductor Emeritus of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, after having been its Principal Guest Conductor. The orchestras which he has conducted in recent years include the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the London Symphony Orchestra (2004 tour), the Orchestre de Paris, the Ensemble InterContemporain, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. In 2005, he began a collaboration with the Staatskapelle Berlin.

Boulez is particularly famed for his polished interpretations of twentieth century classics—Alban Berg, Claude Debussy, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Anton Webern and Edgard Varèse—as well as for numerous performances of contemporary music. Clarity, precision, rhythmic agility and a respect for the composers' intentions as notated in the musical score are the hallmarks of his conducting style. In 1984, he collaborated with Frank Zappa and conducted the Ensemble Intercontemporain, who performed three of Zappa's pieces. He never uses a baton, conducting with his hands alone. His nineteenth century repertoire focuses upon Ludwig van Beethoven, Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann and especially Richard Wagner. His recording of Anton Bruckner's Eighth Symphony has met with considerable critical acclaim. In 1974, he also recorded Maurice Ravel's then little-known orchestral version of "Une Barque sur l'océan" from Miroirs, when there was still no printed score. The score was published only in 1983, and even then only in the first of two slightly different versions Ravel had made.

During his tenure as music director of the New York Philharmonic, he was criticized, even by members of the orchestra, for his concentration on modern repertoire at the expense of works by earlier composers. Nonetheless, Boulez' controversial "Rug" concerts of contemporary music with members of the New York Philharmonic played a significant role in "bridging" the widening gap between the New York downtown music scene with concerts of "uptown" music, directed primarily at Columbia University by a former classmate at the Paris Conservatoire and a pupil of Leibowitz, Jacques-Louis Monod. In his 1981 volume of compilation of reviews from The New York Times, Facing the Music, critic Harold C. Schonberg includes a column in which he details how unhappy some members of the New York Philharmonic orchestra were with Boulez during his tenure.

Boulez has also conducted opera productions and made several recordings of opera. He joined the Bayreuth Festival's roster for 1966's Parsifal, after Hans Knappertsbusch died. Subsequently, he was the conductor for the 1976 centenary production of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, directed by Patrice Chéreau, recordings of which were commercially released in audio and video formats. Boulez reunited with Chéreau for a late seventies production of Alban Berg's Lulu at the Paris Opera (the first-ever production of the completed opera) and a 2007 production originating at Vienna's Theater an der Wien, later traveling to Amsterdam, of Leoš Janáček's From the House of the Dead, in what Boulez said was the last opera production that he would ever conduct. In 2004 and 2005, Boulez returned to Bayreuth to conduct a controversial new production of Parsifal directed by Christoph Schlingensief. Other operas Boulez conducted include Berg's Wozzeck (Opéra National de Paris), Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (Bayreuth, Japan tour), Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle (Aix-en-Provence Festival, choreographed by Pina Bausch, and concert performances), Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande (productions for Covent Garden and WNO and concert performances with the Cleveland Orchestra) and Arnold Schoenberg's Moses und Aron (Amsterdam and Salzburg). On 15 August 2008, he conducted a concert of the music of Leoš Janáček for the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, preceded by a discussion of the music with Roger Wright, Director of the Proms, in the Royal College of Music. In 2010, Boulez finished recording his 15-year, multi-orchestra Mahler cycle for Deutsche Grammophon with the Adagio from Mahler's uncompleted Tenth Symphony with the Cleveland Orchestra. To celebrate Boulez’s 85th birthday Deutsche Grammophon releases his first-ever Karol Szymanowski recording featuring the composer’s popular Violin Concerto no. 1 and Symphony no. 3 “Song of the Night”, with the Wiener Philharmoniker, violinist Christian Tetzlaff, tenor Steve Davislim and the Wiener Singverein.