Pierre Boulez
Sur Incises / Messagesquisse / Anthèmes 2 (Ensemble Intercontemporain feat. conductor Pierre Boulez)

In the case of "Sur Incises", a long piece by Pierre Boulez written between 1996 and 1998, seeing which instruments are used, how many there are, and how they are arranged is as important as listening. The ensemble includes 3 pianos (to the left, center, and right of the conductor) with the soundboards pointed towards the audience; next to them, 3 harps; and behind them, slightly distanced, 3 percussionists playing pitched instruments (mainly vibraphone and marimba, but also tubular bells, timpani, and steel drums).

In total, nine musicians: not too many, really, except for the fact that they unleash a 37-minute sonic whirlwind so dense and intricate that it keeps the listener breathless until the end. The power of Boulez, one who improves with age: as demonstrated by this piece written when the French composer was over seventy.

"Sur Incises" fully possesses many of Boulez's most typical characteristics: the habit of transforming one musical piece into another (it resumes and expands "Incises", a brief solo piano piece from 1994); the originality in sound treatment, which here migrates from one instrumental group to another in solutions that are always extremely vivid and imaginative; the ability to derive a sound rich in color and blend from traditional acoustic instruments (pianos and harps, in this case; the percussion is less predictable, so much so that some have mistaken the unusual sounds of steel drums for electronic usage).

But it doesn't stop there, as the CD features two other pieces, each also unique in terms of ensemble: "Messagesquisse" from 1976-77 for solo cello and a group of six cellos (lasting 8 minutes) and "Anthèmes 2" from 1997 for violin and electronics (20 minutes). You will have already understood that, in the first case, the presence of six cellos counterposed to a soloist serves to replicate and shatter the phrasing of the soloist, so that the sound is decomposed and analyzed as in a prism. In the second case, the violin is transfigured by the use of electronic resources that, in addition to spatializing the sound, highlight and magnify some expressive possibilities of the instrument such as harmonics, glissandos, pizzicatos, and so forth.

Yet another masterstroke for the Frenchman, who with this rewriting ("Anthèmes 2" is derived from the shorter "Anthèmes" for solo violin from 1991) demonstrates once again that good music is born above all from being very demanding with oneself.