Latest Release
- 16 OCT 2023
- 1 Song
- Mozart: Gran Partita - Berg: Kammerkonzert · 2008
- Pierre Boulez Edition: Berg · 1980
- Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps, The Firebird · 1993
- Stravinsky: Le Sacre du printemps · 1900
- Stravinsky: Pétrouchka, Rite of Spring · 1900
- Stravinsky: Pétrouchka, Rite of Spring · 1994
- Boulez Conducts Debussy · 1971
- Ravel: Boléro, Rapsodie espagnole & Ma mère l'Oye · 1994
- Mahler: Symphony No. 5 · 1997
Essential Albums
- Pierre Boulez’s sensual side—really, the arch-modernist has one—is most apparent when he performs the Impressionist music of his French forerunner Ravel. The conductor’s crisp, deliberate, yet fully decadent performances of Boléro have been of great assistance to listeners’ understanding of that piece; on this recording, the woodwind and brass players of the Berliner Philharmoniker savour every solo feature, along with Boulez and his firm hand. Equally stunning is their collective take on Rapsodie espagnole (check out the glistening passages of gorgeousness that surround moments of tumult during “Feria”).
Artist Playlists
- A perpetual enfant terrible, Boulez is a musical provocateur and a major modern voice.
Singles & EPs
About Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez radically expanded classical music’s possibilities. Born in 1925 in Montbrison, France, Boulez enrolled at the Paris Conservatory in 1942 and discovered serialism, a compositional method that appealed to both his mathematical sensibilities and rebelliousness. His 1954 chamber work, Le marteau sans maître, which he revised in 1957, established Boulez’s careful sense of structure as well as his habit of reworking his pieces. Later works would grant performers an unprecedented degree of agency, opening up new worlds of indeterminacy. Boulez was also chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, music director of the New York Philharmonic and a guest conductor of many orchestras around the world. In this capacity, he delivered canonical performances of contemporary pieces by Ligeti and Messiaen, and in 1996, he won a Grammy for the Cleveland Orchestra’s recording of Debussy: Nocturnes, Première rhapsodie, Jeux & La mer. Boulez’s belief in the power of the new took him far beyond the orchestra pit: From 1970 until the mid-’90s, he was director of IRCAM, the pioneering Parisian centre for electronic music. He continued working well into his eighties before passing away in 2016.
- HOMETOWN
- Montbrison, France
- BORN
- 26 March 1925
- GENRE
- Classical