Pierre Boulez / Jean-Guihen Queyras BOULEZ Sur Incises - Messagesquisse - Anthèmes 2

Virtual infinity, music apparently without beginning or end or, in the wider context of the history of ideas, the open-endedness of the modern work of art; this is the radical conclusion that Pierre Boulez has drawn from atonality and from static and asymmetrical rhythm and metre in the wake of Webern, Stravinsky and Messiaen. In order to illustrate this fundamental change of attitude, he has suggested the image of a labyrinth - a structure involving ideas and experiences which, unlike the traditionally unambiguous Euclidean language of forms, acknowledges new convolutions and directions whose feasibility demands to be discovered and patiently explored. The consequences of this voyage of discovery embrace every aspect of composition and music-making and find expression not only in the notorious revisions to which Boulez subjects virtually all his works as a matter of principle, but also within each individual piece. The three works included in the present recording may serve to demonstrate the validity of this remark.

Each of this works is notable for its distinctive instrumental design: Anthèmes 2, for example, is scored for a solo violin whose playing is electronically split, up in performance, with the result that the soloist not only communes with himself but also with the ambient space. In Messagesquisse a solo cello is pitted against six other cellos that replicate its part in various ways. At the beginning, the tutti cellos enter in a kind of fugato, creating the impression of a flight of stairs, with each new entry imitating the main part in the manner of an echo and sustaining the notes in question. In this way the music unfolds like a prism. Sur Incises, finally, is scored for three pianos, three harps and three percussion instruments and is based on Incises for piano solo. In other words, all three works deal with the transformation of an essentially solo idea to produce completely different forms of musical interaction, forms that are novel, contemporary expressions of musical communication.