Customer Reviews

3 Sonatas

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Helffer is a seasoned veteran of the avant-garde, although I heard some Schoenberg I didn't like. He tends to go for the brightness of sound,uncontrollably at times and even when it is not required to furthes the structural argument. These three sonatas are like granite boulders in the histories not only the of the avant-garde but of the piano. The "First" was like a student work, but a student with an intense vision of the intellectual history of Europe. Sure Boulez at the piano is a few feet away from his teacher Messiaen, with the extremes of violence,crashing chords, high register attacks, nose-dives into the lower depths, rhythmic cells of fast and furious sparks. But Boulez has always had an affinity for the surreal, the poetic, and always had a deep musicianship of his generation. An aesthetic engaging the purely beautiful, and well as the intensely analytical. The "Second" is a tour de force barn-burner or perhaps cathedral-burner of an immature iconoclast, it a music that remains with you for a long time shaking your sensibility and foreshadowing the two other sonatas. In the "Second" the "extremement rapide" reveals this uncaged demon visiting again all the registers of the piano. Boulez once said that the piano is a very violent instrument,and it needs to be "worked" continuous to sustain its roaring power. In an obcure way these three "sonatas" are about this violence and poetry. The "Third" is the most structurally indeterminate, and the most diffucult to apprehend. At the time(the late Fifties) the fascination with unfinished forms,mobile-like musical structures held the avant-gardes imagination. Certainly European avant-garde's friendship with John Cage contributed greatly toward their exposure to the non-aesthetic of the unfinished. Helffer chose "formants 3 and 2" to play. The work involves the element of "choice" where he can/may choose the path. As if you are given a map and it is up to you as to claiming your destination. Having these Sonatas all in one place is an achievment. I really prefer Yvonne Loriod playing the "Second" on an old Vega vinyl she brings an overwheming power.

Of the three piano sonatas Helffer brings a real surreal like quality to the Third,more so than Charles Rosen, who's a bit academic.And here included is the formant 3 movement, Boulez used the acoustic term 'formant' formatives in English rather than 'movement' referring to configurations of associations of timbres.
The Third to date remains incomplete and it's a good guess will remain so for eternity. The original plan was five movements a.Antiphonie, B.Trope, C. Constellation or Constellation-miroir, D.Strophe, and E. Sequence; Only formants B and C are published. The fascination back then for the post war avant-garde was this concept of open form,John Cage utilized the term "indeterminacy' Boulez had utilized aleatoric somewhat in reference to Mallarme, the poet, an eternal icon in the Boulez aesthetic.
Boulez's lifelong affinity with Mallarme's "concept of book",is what is at the center of the "Third Sonata" a loose yet ultimately controlled situation, and has proved to intrigue,to interest Boulez with his other works.This is true as in 'Rituels' where the conductor cues and determines the different tempi. The idea that enrichment of genre,of discourse,of structural aesthetic occurs from moment to moment, passage to passage. And since for music, the tyranny of time is only and remains in one direction,all one can do to adopt an affinity with this elliptical handling,manipulation,this tossing of materials backwards and forewards.
So for instance here in the 'Third Sonata', one can invert A and B formants, D and E as a long formant,but C always remains central to the work,like stamping it with a signature,a timbral icon. Helffer is quite exciting,quite evocative,brutal, and suggestive of graphic something in formant 3 which you seldom hear.This is not quite as interesting as the Calder "Mobiles" which was an early metyaphor for this post war generation.
The timbres seem flagellated,with piano resonances utilized, that's where you silently depress some tones and violently play others thereby setting into motion the sympathetic overtones. These can be dissonant resonances which of course Boulez prefers to cosonant ones, which are anathema. This part seems to make more linear sense on first hearing as opposed to formant 2 which can get tedious,with pointillisitic like materials, lines tossed over all the registers of the piano. It takes some performative vision for that.
Likewise the 'First Sonata' Helffer makes for clear transparent structures, the timbres are laid out very clean,resonant,and threadbare.Yet you can hear 'interstitial' tones when a chord is rolled, played from bottom to top Well this was Boulez's youthful visions,like the 'Flute Sonatine',both these early works reveal an originality of musical language,of directedness, but of also a deep muscianship.Helffer seems to comprehend the "First Sonata"it's unbounded yet restrained energy, much more than the Second". The 'Second Sonata' Helffer is simply more clangorous than he needs to be and the first movement for instance although marked "Extremement rapide',there is a treacherous durational precipice here, if its too fast, the lines, the rhythmic cells aren't given enough time to speak, and the result is simply one dimensional noise,sterile ideas under Helffer's hands.The piano timbre becomes white noise, as opposed to orchestral like divisions of colour as Yvonne Loriod so admirablt achieves. You need to shape and forecefully plan, scope the brutal gestures in abundance. Artaud was a metaphor for the young Boulez. In this 'Second Sonata', there is strong projection,alternating the attack of the keys,some 12 lacunae of different timbres, which Boulez had identified for a richness of timbral base.
As the work progresses these rhythmic cells Boulez had indentifies become blurred,something he learned from Messiaen. For instance there are gradations of projections of these motives, but when say they are interrupted by other materials stockpiling themselves across the durational frame you need a clear sense of when this accretion of material occurs and when then it thins out. It does this quite simply at times, for Boulez sought the violent directedness of the work, not a gesture far from his teacher Olivier Messiaen at that time. Helffer seems to be on some other agenda which doesn't bear much fruit.
The Second Sonata seems beyond Helffers's imagination, it it simply noise, unshaped,or non-directional.
I prefer Yvonne Loriod on an old Vega Vinyl. She renders the brutality of the work, and gives a sense of shape,of definition to the various timbral structures, which can encompass the entire keyboard.

Pierre Boulez's three piano sonatas are early works indeed. The first two were written in his early 20s, while the third came not long after. The French pianist Claude Helffer performs on this Astree Auvidis disc from 1986, but the disc has been released on Montaigne with better packaging.

Even for those familiar with much serial music, even if you've heard everything else Boulez composed, the piano sonatas can be difficult listening. In fact, in the beginning one might think it merely a series of bleeps and bloops without order. Gaining insight into these takes time, and in the beginning one should focus on the simple succession of individual gestures even if the musical development on a large scale can't be perceived. Over time, however, the sonatas unlock their secrets, and one begins to notice motifs and clever form.

The first two sonatas are not Boulez's first pieces--they were preceded by the recently rehabilitated "Notations" for piano (1945)--but they are Boulez's first individual achievement. In the "Piano Sonata No. 1" (1946) the sonorities of Webern (especially the "Symphonie" op. 21), coexist with an interest in dynamic and attack which is pure Boulez. The first movement is developed out of merely four opening gestures: a rising minor sixth, an appoggiatura, an isolated note, and a brusqe arpeggio. The second movement opens with cells all over the keyboard, and the dashing between octaves hints at Boulez's later solo piano work "Incises".

For much of his career has sought to take serialism beyond mere miniatures, like Webern, to grand designs. The four-movement "Piano Sonata No. 2" (1948) is, at nearly a half an hour long, an important venture in this direction. Popular opinions about Boulez as entirely detached from tradition will be amazed at the work's clear debt to Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" and "Waldstein" sonatas, and it even uses a B-A-C-H motif throughout. Its first movement is marked "extremement vif"--right off we find a violence and virtuosity never before heard in Boulez--and it posseses the elegant dramatic arc of classical sonata form, exposition--development--recapitulation. The second, slow movement is lyrical and melodic, while the brief (three-minute) third minute combines variation and scherzo form. The fourth movement, however, is extremely rich, made up of an introduction, a fugue, a rondo, and a coda. A twelve-tone fugue makes for exciting listening.

The "Piano Sonata No. 3" (1955-57) was written during Boulez's interest in quasi-aleatoric writing where the performer was free to decide the order of the piece's sections. Inspired by Mallarme and the possibility of a book in perpetual expansion, this quality can be found also in Boulez's "Eclat" and "Pli selon pli", though Boulez ultimately fixed the ordering of the latter. This sonata has remained uncompleted for almost fifty years, and of the five "formants" (not "movements", since they don't move forward) which are to make up the piece, only the second and third have been published. The Third Sonata is by far the most abstract of the three, and understanding its structure involves close listening, ideally with score at hand. While based on an interesting concept, it offers fewer possibilities for mere entertainment than the first two.

Helffer's performance is good, but I'm reluctant to think too highly of it. In 2005 Deutsche Grammophon released a recording by Pavali Jumppanen that, if not called outright definitive by Boulez, still seems to carry the composer's approval. Helffer ranks a bit below with Idil Biret on Naxos; both take a spritely approach this is refreshing, but they both flub a few spots in the Second Sonata especially, and the sparing use of pedal doesn't seem in keeping with the score. This recording has fine liner notes, but for best understanding the sonatas I'd recommend getting a copy of Dominique Jameux's PIERRE BOULEZ (English translation Harvard University Press, 1991 ISBN 0-674-66740-9).

For me, Boulez really hit his stride after "Eclat", when he produced a number of works full of brilliant colour and elegant construction such as "Sur Incises", "...explosante-fixe..." and "Repons". I'd recommend those first to anyone curious about Boulez's music. Still, the piano sonatas are an interesting step in Boulez's musical development, as well as some of the most rigorous and adventurous serial writing of the generation after the Second Viennese School. Get Jumppanen's performance first, seek out the rest if you're a passionate Boulez fan.