Todd Rosenberg, photo
Sunday, March 30, 2025
Milton Court & Barbican Hall, London
It was most of the day on BBC Radio 3, and most of the day at the Barbican Centre and its surrounds – “Boulez at 100” – the two coming together at 3 p.m. at Milton Court for what became a two-thirds showcase for Guildhall School musicians; unfortunately, David Palmer was indisposed, the Second Piano Sonata now played by Tamara Stefanovich (already due to appear in the evening concert) who, as in her recent recording of it, gave a commanding account of this great piece, its complexity clarified, its linearity made lucid. Either side, works for clarinet. Lily Payne gave virtuoso rendition of Domaines, a range of attacks and timbres emerging from her instrument, equally so from Benat Erro Diez’s in Dialogue de l’ombre double, with live electronics, a compelling fluttering of sounds, shadowy responses, ricochets, complements and perspectives.
The concluding concert (7 o’clock) opened with some Boulezian musique concrète, the primitive-sounding yet explorative Deux Études, followed by Stefanovich essaying the Notations (1945), twelve pieces each of twelve bars, during which much is exposed, enough for five of them to be expanded and orchestrated (Boulez’s plan was to do the lot), then she essayed the scorching vitality of Incises in its revised/extended version. Before the interval, Cummings ist der Dichter (choir and ensemble), revealing Boulez’s unbridled enjoyment of Cummings’s words and placing them in a musical context. Martyn Brabbins conducted and went on to lead an equally scrupulous reading of the five-movement Pli selon pli (Fold upon fold), subtitled ‘Portrait de Mallarmé’, his texts inhabiting the whole, especially in the three ‘Improvisation’ sections, soprano Anna Dennis heroic (some off-the-scale notation) and expressive, the writing for an extensive line-up of instruments played brilliantly and precisely to collectively weave atmosphere, beauty, variegation and scintillation, the emotional build and release during the final movement (‘Tombeau’) quite thrilling. This kaleidoscopic seventy-three-minute performance left in no doubt that Pli selon pli is a masterpiece, which Boulez developed over three decades. Well-worth such an effort.
Boulez
Domaines
Lily Payne (clarinet)
Piano Sonata No.2
Tamara Stefanovich replacing David Palmer
Dialogue de l’ombre double
Benat Erro Diez (clarinet)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0029888
Deux Études (tape)
Notations*
Incises*
Cummings ist der Dichter**/^
Pli selon pli***/^
Tamara Stefanovich (piano)*
BBC Singers**
Anna Dennis (soprano)***
BBC Symphony Orchestra/Martyn Brabbins^
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00298