As the 90th birthday of Pierre Boulez in March 2015 draws nearer, there will be no shortage of musical tributes to the eminent modernist composer and conductor throughout the classical world.
Few of them, however, are likely to be as thoughtfully assembled as the special presentation with which the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is honoring Boulez this weekend.
More than three years in the making, the CSO’s Beyond the Score series presentation of “A Pierre Dream: A Portrait of Pierre Boulez” will take place Friday night and Sunday afternoon at Symphony Center.
In a departure from the usual format of a series that Boulez, the orchestra’s conductor emeritus, has championed from its inception, the 75-minute theatrical presentation will examine the life, influence and compositional output of this revolutionary musician through music, words and video projections.
Live and recorded musical examples drawn from Boulez’s entire catalog will enlist 18 CSO members and guests in various combinations under the baton of Pablo Heras-Casado. In addition there will be rare documentary footage of Boulez from the 1960s to the present, and an original stage design by the famed architect Frank Gehry.
Artists, writers, musicians, scientists and philosophers whose works and ideas have been important to Boulez and have influenced his musical thinking will be represented. Texts, many spoken by Boulez himself, will be drawn from his own writings, among other sources.
The richly layered presentation is in keeping with the richly layered musical genius of an artist who has been an invaluable part of the CSO’s life since his podium debut here in 1969.
Diminished eyesight and mobility have conspired to keep Boulez away from the event, but only physically. One of the 20th century’s most influential and important musical figures will be seen and heard throughout the program via interviews a camera crew under the supervision of Gerard McBurney filmed last fall at Boulez’s home in Baden-Baden, Germany.
“His energy supplies weren’t what they used to be, but he was still amazing, so open and generous with his time that we came back with about eight hours of material,” reports McBurney, CSO artistic programming advisor and Beyond the Score’s creative director, who met with Boulez along with Martha Gilmer, former CSO vice president of artistic planning and audience development, who left in September 2014 to become CEO of the San Diego Symphony.
“Pierre made it clear he didn’t want us to make a documentary, because he had done enough of those,” McBurney says. Rather, “he said he wanted something that would bring the music alive in a way that would make it a little more engaging, especially for somebody who thinks they don’t like that kind of music.”
It was at Gilmer’s suggestion that McBurney turned to Gehry to create the movable projecting surfaces that are being used in “A Pierre Dream.”
Each a master in his particular sphere, Boulez and Gehry are longtime friends, and the visionary architect was a logical choice to reimagine the Orchestra Hall stage as a Boulezian performance space. Boulez himself has famously advocated finding new ways to make traditional concert halls more welcoming for the music of our time.
Gehry originally had proposed that the video footage be projected onto a network of sail-like surfaces – a Gehry trademark familiar to anyone who’s frequented the Gehry-designed Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park – but he later dropped that idea in favor of using a series of large banners borne above the heads of the performers.
“When we tried out the banners at a workshop here in September, somebody said they looked like the gigantic humanoid puppets of bunraku, the traditional Japanese puppet theater,” McBurney says. “That was a kind of breakthrough for us, since bunraku means a lot to both Pierre and Frank. This really draws them together in this project.” (Gehry, it should be noted, designed a new concert hall in Berlin, scheduled to open next year, which is to be named Pierre Boulez Hall.)
Plans are for “A Pierre Dream” (Gehry came up with the title) to be filmed for eventual streaming at the CSO’s website. Another live presentation is scheduled for next year’s Ojai Music Festival in California, and other concert presenters in the U.S. and Europe also have expressed interest in taking up the project, according to the CSO.
“Pierre is not in himself a particularly theatrical subject,” McBurney observes. “Still, in some ways, I think this is the most theatrical Beyond the Score we’ve ever done. We’ve tried to be true to the music and Pierre and the things he says.”
His ultimate hope for “A Pierre Dream,” as for every Beyond the Score program, he adds, is for “the many moving parts” to “strike sparks off each other” and for “something poetic to emerge from it.”
The CSO’s Beyond the Score presentation of “A Pierre Dream” will be heard at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 3 p.m. Sunday at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave. Each event will include a postconcert Q&A with Gerard McBurney; $25-$152; 312-294-3000, cso.org.
Album of the week
Listeners wishing to open their ears and minds to the richly imagined musical sounds that make every Boulez work a voyage of discovery are directed to a recently issued, 13-disc box of composer-led (or composer-supervised) recordings on Deutsche Grammophon whose front cover bears the somewhat misleading title “Boulez: Complete Works.”
Misleading because Boulez considers every piece of music he has written to be a work in progress – “provisionally definitive” is his preferred term – subject to as much later revision or elaboration (or both) as he deems necessary.
Regardless of nomenclature, this 90th-birthday homage contains every composition Boulez has written from the 1950s through the first decade of the 21st century. Other performers and groups include Maurizio Pollini, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Christine Schaefer, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, BBC Symphony and Vienna Philharmonic. The annotations are as authoritative as the performances. This set is an absolute necessity for anyone seeking entry into the challenging music of today’s greatest composer.
Aimard’s Bach ’24’
Throughout a close association with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra that began in 1988, the thoughtful French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard has structured his solo recitals as keyboard marathons. I won’t soon forget his exploration of Messiaen’s ecstatic “Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jesus,” or his three-hour program of 20th century piano miniatures. And Aimard is scheduled to present a generous survey of Boulez piano works here in March.
Aimard returned to Orchestra Hall on Sunday afternoon to present another epic masterpiece, the entire Book 1 of Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier.” It turned out to be one of the most rewarding concerts I’ve attended all year.
As with his previous performances here, keen interpretative intelligence and superb technical control worked hand in hand. Articulations were so precise that every voice in Bach’s sometimes dense contrapuntal textures emerged clearly.
Yet, to these 24 pairings of preludes and fugues in every key, the pianist also brought subtle rhythmic inflections and enough variety of tone and touch to keep them from ever feeling like dry, pedantic exercises.
One could question this or that tempo choice but not the high seriousness and lofty musical integrity with which Aimard approached each piece. At all times he sought out the humanity within the pedagogy. The pianist once told me that “concerts, if they are to have any meaning these days, should preserve the original joy of discovery.” This one did.
Twitter @jvonrhein
