BOULEZ ENSEMBLE & MATTHIAS PINTSCHER

BOULEZ ENSEMBLE & MICHAEL WENDEBERG

“Fold by fold”—pli selon pli—Pierre Boulez reveals a portrait of the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, arguably the most important literary influence on his music, in his eponymous work for soprano and orchestra. Michael Wendeberg, who worked closely with Boulez as pianist of the Ensemble intercontemporain, conducts excerpts from the composer’s most expansive score, in the piece’s Pierre Boulez Saal premiere. The program also includes the 1965 ensemble work Éclat as well as compositions by Maurice Ravel and Austrian composer Thomas Wally, born in 1981.

Matthias Pintscher

Matthias Pintscher & Cédric Tiberghien

ALEXIS KOSSENKO & ENSEMBLE

with Daniel Sepec, Charlotte Spruit, Léa Hennino, Christophe Coin, Michaël Chanu

WEST-EASTERN DIVAN ENSEMBLE

The genesis of Pierre Boulez’s only string quartet Livre pour quatuor—begun by the composer in the late 1940s and left unfinished at the time of his death—resembles a veritable never­ending story. In 2018, Philippe Manoury, one of today’s leading French composers and a close artistic associate of Boulez, completed the fragment of the fourth movement based on the extant sketches. The West-Eastern Divan Ensemble per­forms Manoury’s version, which had its world premiere at the Pierre Boulez Saal, juxtaposing it with Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet and Schubert’s late String Quintet.

Matthias Pintscher & Xavier de Maistre

The concert will be broadcast on Deutschlandfunk Kultur on 27 February 2024 at 8.03 pm.

Kansas City Symphony / Conrad Tao / Matthias Pintscher

A gentle trill from the clarinet, a lascivious glissando, and one of the most famous pieces for piano and orchestra picks up speed: George Gershwin’s »Rhapsody in Blue«. Presented to the public slightly awkwardly in 1924 as an »experiment in modern music«, it has since become something of a signature tune for the Broadway composer. Catchy jazz and blues melodies together with a casual orchestral sound and a highly virtuoso piano part bring the Roaring Twenties vividly to life. The Kansas City Symphony is celebrating its 100th anniversary under the direction of its new chief conductor Matthias Pintscher together with 30-year-old pianist Conrad Tao, whom the New York Times sees as the »future of classical music«. This highlight of the piano repertoire is framed by two further classics by famous American composers: Charles Ives’s »Three Places in New England« with a marvellously whimsical march in the middle section, and Aaron Copland’s powerful Third Symphony. Welcome to the United States of America!

BOULEZ ENSEMBLE & GEORGE BENJAMIN

During Pierre Boulez’s tenure as music director of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the early 1970s, the BBC produced a series of TV documentaries that intro­duced the young George Benjamin to the music of composers such as Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Varèse, and Ives. Not long afterward, while still a teenager, he began his composition studies with Boulez’s former teacher Olivier Messiaen. Now one of the foremost musicians of our time, Benjamin closes the Pierre Boulez Saal season, appearing in multiple artistic capacities. Leading the Boulez Ensemble, he conducts Boulez’s …explosante-fixe… of 1993 in addition to his own Three Inventions and Oliver Knussen’s Two Organa, written in 1995.

Matthias Pintscher Javier Perianes Camille Saint-Saëns Claude Debussy

German Matthias Pintscher conducts Camille Saint-Saëns “Egyptian” piano concerto, Claude Debussy’s tribute to Spain and England, and his own orchestral piece neharot, which he wrote at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Matthias Pintscher (b. 1971) had his international breakthrough as a composer in his 20s with symphonies, opera and ballet. He has since established himself as a conductor at the highest level. Pintscher wrote the orchestral work neharot in 2020 and has himself described the work as follows:“Neharot means rivers in Hebrew, but also tears. It also describes lamentation. This music was written during the worst period of the many daily deaths in the spring of 2020...and is a clear echo of the desolation and fear, but also the hope for light that so emotionally characterized this time in our lives.”Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) was born in Paris and lived there his whole life. But he loved to travel, and preferred to spend the winter in warmer climates. Egypt was one of his favorite travel destinations, and in the winter of 1896, he wrote his Piano Concerto No. 5, which was nicknamed “The Egyptian”, in the historic city of Luxor.The music in Piano Concerto No. 5 has clear exotic undertones, perhaps inspired as much by Javanese and Spanish music as by the Middle East. Saint-Saëns was a brilliant pianist, and like in his previous piano concertos, he combines brilliant piano playing with catchy melodies.Claude Debussy (1862–1918) also came from and lived in Paris. Unlike Saint-Saëns, it did not travel outside of Europe’s borders. In the orchestral work Images pour orchestra, he conjures up musical paintings of his three favorite countries: England, Spain, and France.In the first movement, Gigues, the enigmatic atmosphere of the opening is broken by a famous English folk tune. Ibéria describes Spain in three colorful parts: “Along the streets and along the paths”, “The scents of the night” and “The morning of a festive day”. The third movement, “Round dances of spring”, is a jubilant tribute to spring and May.