The Orchestre National de France and Philippe Manoury here pay tribute to Pierre Boulez the conductor, teacher and mentor—these deeply valued other facets to the composer whose centenary we are celebrating this year.
One work for wind instruments, one for strings alone, then in the second part one for the full orchestra and two voices, as well as a journey through the musical history of the first half of the 20th century. After the First World War, Igor Stravinsky created a composition which he called Symphonies for Wind Instruments and which contains characteristic intonations such as bell sounds, chorale and folk song melodies as well as dance rhythms in a small space. Richard Strauss described his Metamorphosen as a “study for 23 solo strings”, his last orchestral work, which took shape in 1944/45 under the impact of the destruction of the Second World War, as a harrowing document of the times. At the beginning of the 1920s, Alexander Zemlinsky, biographically positioned between Strauss and Stravinsky, composed the Lyric Symphony, a series of orchestral songs based on texts by the Indian poet (and Nobel Prize winner for literature) Rabindranath Tagore, as a deliberate counterpart to Mahler's Song of the Earth, a work of great expressiveness and urgency.
One work for wind instruments, one for strings alone, then in the second part one for the full orchestra and two voices, as well as a journey through the musical history of the first half of the 20th century. After the First World War, Igor Stravinsky created a composition which he called Symphonies for Wind Instruments and which contains characteristic intonations such as bell sounds, chorale and folk song melodies as well as dance rhythms in a small space. Richard Strauss described his Metamorphosen as a “study for 23 solo strings”, his last orchestral work, which took shape in 1944/45 under the impact of the destruction of the Second World War, as a harrowing document of the times. At the beginning of the 1920s, Alexander Zemlinsky, biographically positioned between Strauss and Stravinsky, composed the Lyric Symphony, a series of orchestral songs based on texts by the Indian poet (and Nobel Prize winner for literature) Rabindranath Tagore, as a deliberate counterpart to Mahler's Song of the Earth, a work of great expressiveness and urgency.
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