Customer Reviews

Boulez: Pli selon Pli

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I first heard this work back in 1984, when Boulez conducted the LA Philharmonic at UCLA in a program with music by Debussy and Carter. I had never heard anything like it. This was music like from some exotic, undreamt of world. Watching the huge forces arrayed on stage producing such delicate and timbrally rich sounds was a delight, and the waves of percussion-led music that gradually built up like huge waves of crashing sounds was thrilling. After that concert I purchased the old CBS recording, made in the 1960s, with Halina Lukomska in the soprano part. The Sony Walkman was just out, and I found myself listening to this music on headphones every where I went, so mesmerizing was it, so unpredictable sounding: it was perfect music to listen to while out and about on foot, it seemed to capture the sense of movement and surprise that you have when you are on the city streets, not knowing what is going to come upon you, living your life moment by moment, step by step, the music here in tune with your pulse, there at some odds, but nicely so.

I grew enormously attached to the CBS version as a result of these repeated hearings/wanderings, and was disappointed by the next version that was recorded, on ERATO, with Phyllis Bryn-Julson, because it struck me as having prettified the music. Edges were now smoothed out, the playing of the orchestra was much more polished, less on edge. My favorite remained the CBS version. Now this new one comes along on DG. It continues down the path of the ERATO version, bringing Boulez more in line with Debussy than ever. The playing is superb, the sound much gentler on the ear, the textures less forest-like, more crystalline. This sounds more like equisite chamber music now, and less like a journey into an atonal tropics. It's a beautiful performance, but I would never want to be without the old CBS (now SONY) version.

Pli Selon Pli is the first piece by Boulez that I heard back in the 70's. At the time, it's orchestration struck me...modern and uncompromising, and yet still distinctly French. Time has mellowed Boulez and the piece. Now it seems to me that the ties to the Impressionists are very strong in the composer, much stronger than one might have guessed back in the 50s when he was an anti-traditionalist firebrand.

Pli Selon Pli is a work for large forces, though these are used sparingly and in a chamber music fashion. The opening and closing movements of the work feature the full ensemble. Embedded in the piece are three "Improvisations sur Marllarme" which began their lives as separate pieces and were encorporated into the complete work later. They retain most of their original soprano and chamber ensemble setting. The language is Boulezian - totally serial and uncompromisingly dissonant, and yet, especially in this new recording of the finalized work, it is sensual, with moments that are achingly lovely. Boulez's genius for instrumental sonority has never been better showcased than in this piece (though Le Martel sans Maitre comes close). Boulez fans will want both the original recording from the 70s and this one as there are many interesting points of comparison. Those who are curious about the composer would do best with this recording only. Pli Selon Pli is oe of the composer's most attractive works and a great place for anyone with adventurous ears to start learning about this seminal figure in 20th century music.

Pli Selon Pli (Fold by Fold) is one of the best, if not the very best, song-cycles to come out of the 20th Century. It was written by the venerable Pierre Boulez, one of the most original and provacative living composers--also probably the greatest. Most of his works are still "in progress", and this one had a multi-decade gestation period, but it's finished now, a perfectly balanced work that begins and ends on the same definitive chord.

The great French poet Mallarme may have been shocked to hear what sort of music Boulez wrote to accompany his poems, but the word-setting, though hardly hummable, has a strange beauty all of its own, and acutally lends more melody to this work than you'll find in most atonal pieces--after all, an orchestra can play just harmony and rhythm, but a soprano can only sing a melody, no matter how large the leaps it makes. Christine Schafer dispatches Boulez's difficult lines well--she may be slightly troubled by the high note near the end, but it comes out clearly and maybe is even more convincing this way. Who wouldn't find it tough?

But, in true Boulez fashion, no matter how beguiling the vocal lines it is ultimately the orchestra which dominates. This is no tragedy, however, because in M. Boulez we have one of the master orchestraters of all time. You can see from the pictures included in the liner notes what a battery of percussion is at the disposal of the Ensemble InterContemporain, and Boulez makes good use of all of it. The shimmering sonorities are instantly attractive.

Let me qualify that: they will be attractive assuming the listener has had some experience appreciating atonal music. It would be possible to fall in love with this at first listen, but I doubt if that happens often. It took me a couple years of slowly testing the water to warm up to 12-tone music, but I'm glad I persevered. Nonetheless, my family, who have little tolerance for modern art, give me a very hard time if I listen to this on anything but my headphones. However, if you've bought this and hate it, I recommend giving it a few more chances. You might well warm up to its unusual sound-world, as I did.

Anyway, the glittering, otherworldly sonorities of this masterpiece are, as usual, played with virtuosic panache by the doyens of avant-garde orchestral works, the Ensemble InterContemporain. This orchestra was founded by Pierre Boulez, so they are his definitive interpreters and respond well to his direction. This stuff is pretty beatless, so I don't even know exactly how it would be conducted or how the players follow Boulez's beat, but he has a true rapport with the Ensemble and everything comes off with clarity and precision.

I really like this whole work, but if I don't have time to listen to all of it I'll probably hear the beginning, then head for the denouement--the final movement is all orchestral until the very end, when the single, beautifully creepy line "Un peu profond ruisseau calomine la mort" is sung (it means "A trickling stream we villify as death"). I think the orchestral part really does sound like a stream or river, but I'm not sure Boulez would appreciate me saying that. Anyway, listening to Christine Schafer sing that line, with all the altitudinous writing, then whisper "la mort", followed by the tremendous finality of the last chord, is spine-tingling and unforgettable. The end probably ranks as my favorite part.

If you're a fan of atonal works, or brilliant orchestration in general, this should be on your shelf. It will stretch your ears, but, if you're open to this repetoire, it will very likely make them tingle with delight, too.

Why another recording of Pli Selon Pli? As you may already know, Boulez has tended to continually revise and/or pull out of circulation works with which he's not completely satisfied, one of those being Improvisation III from Pli Selon Pli. At the time of writing Boulez's biography in the 1980s, Dominique Jameaux became aware that he was not simply revising Improvisation III but rewriting it entirely. And a rewriting it is: while there are some motifs and structures carried over from the original work, it is a completely different piece and with it has a very different atmosphere. As far as I can tell this is the only recording available of the new version. The other movements are all basically the same as, e.g., his previous recording in 1983 on Erato with Phyllis Bryn-Julson and the BBC Symphony Orchestra (previously out-of-print; re-released in boxed sets on both the Erato and Apex labels).

Other reviewers have correctly noted that this recording is in the same vein as the 1983 recording, as compared to the Sony recording from 1969: much more sumptuous and evocative. *However*, I would not go so far as to say that this is necessarily because Boulez has mellowed -- as his 2005 recording of "Le Marteau san maître" will attest otherwise. He himself has admitted revising much of his approach to orchestration over the years through experiences as a conductor, that there were a lot of things that he might change if he had them to do over. Furthermore, this work is not intended to be anything like "Le Marteau..." or more recent works like "Répons", and all three works are masterpieces in their own right. To compare them would miss the point.

Why four stars: all said, personally I truly prefer the 1983 recording of Improvisation I ("La vierge, le vivace...") and Tombeau. That recording captured the frozen landscape of Improvisation I with a much deeper sumptuousness that was truly gorgeous, and Tombeau was edgier and with a greater sense of urgency at the breath-taking conclusion. It also sounds to me as though Schäfer is straining a little to hit the high notes at the end of Tombeau (hard to blame her), whereas Bryn-Julson hit them with less effort. But I do prefer this version of Improvisation III. All Boulez fans should check it out.

On February 18, 1890, Mallarme delivered a lecture in Bruges,Belgium to honor Villiers de l'Isle Adam, who died the previous year, the title "pli selon pli" occurs on the fourth line of a subsequent poem "Rememoration d'amis belges", and utilized to describe how the mist disperses gradually to reveal an architecture of the city of Bruges or a topology of an imagined space. It was such an image, a demonstrative concept that Boulez sought this creative exergue, this odyssey which has involuntarily it seems spanned his life,like a possession for timbre and the "word", the image.

The many times predictable pointillism of the vocal lines in the self-contained "Improvisations sur Mallarme" for soprano and percussion ensemble of "Improvisation sur Mallarme I" "Le vierge. . ." and, "Improvisation sur Mallarme II" "Une dentelle s'abolit",are difficult.These three"Improvisations" represent different approaches to settings of sonnets. The 'First Improvisation'(according to the interview here with Boulez) is more playful,less strict,the 'Second Improvisation', there is more direct connections between the musical imagery and the text.Yet you always feel the music, the "hanging" timbres ringing moments of vibraphone,harp and piano,i.e.the sustaining exergue are simply timbral "blankets" for the text to attach itself quite evocatively.There is a restrained sensuality in the vocal lines here throughout this work,sung so complellingly by Ms.Schafer, as if they belong to another dimension,for we become overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of instrumental colour.

I thought the rupture, the break with conventional time, that implied the innovations within the serial music was a realm Boulez sought to escape.And here the soprano has more an instrumental demeanor about it, unwilling to break from that undefined role.For aside from the Italian cadre,(Berio and Nono),serialism did not foster a wealth of works for the voice.Only with the introduction of budding electronic means did masterworks occur(as Stockhausen's "Gesang der Junglinge" and Berio's "Visage" Nono's utilization of political text(Canto sospeso" was innovative in all respects. They had their own means of escape from this structural tyranny. For serialism within a short span of time (roughly 1950 to 1959) exhausted itself. Adorno had said as much, who was around,attending concerts, and lecturing himself at Darmstadt Courses, and came to terms with these youngsters,as not being modern enough, or refusing to challenge oneself outside of technical innovation. Serial music seemed to be about itself and nothing more,and the tyranny of creative invention simply recoiled on itself with simply trying the untried, a work for three orchestras,(Stockhausen) a work with voice and percussion(Berio),or two pianos (Boulez). Serialism simply demanded new packages and products, not new content. And this was something Boulez had felt in searching fof another context, one where one needn't use all 12 tones. In the wonderful interview here with Wolfgang Fink, he says as much, "I found it unbearable to use all 12 tones. . . ".

I'm still undecided if the Five Movements here (pli selon pli) actually hang together,and imply,constitute one unified realm, even within the Boulez cognitive field of posing structural freedom of the music's discourse, its creative implications, with an'unfreedom', again something he found profoundly within Mallarme's "Livre" and concept of "alea",chance but with a conscious, controlled unfreedom, something quite different from Cage's pureposless purpose of Zen indeterminacy.The music of chance and musical graphics recall ran faster toward its demise than Boulez's aleatoricism.For instance I still find usefull,and compelling moments in Boulez's 'Third Piano Sonata', and realistically there is yet to be a definitive performance of it. Rosen's and Psi-Chein's and Claude Helffer's are all simply 'readings', and useful guides.Whereas Cage's "Music of Changes"his first focused chance extended work, I find nothing left to think through, as if the work's realization had already occured decades ago.
Boulez's first movement here in "pli selon pli" is a recitation with enormous orchestral forces. It was in 1960, where a provisional premiere had occurred, originally here a piano solo, a soprano was added based on Mallarme's "Don du poeme" and first performed in Cologne June 13, 1960. This was followed by "Improvisations" of 1957-1960, and then an incomplete version of "Tombeau". Since that time "Don" became a piece for large orchestra with voice, as an oppositional counterweight to "Tombeau". "Tombeau" itself exhibited Boulez's ongoing interest in finality ( his dedication to Maderna "Rituel" etc), accumulates itself as it unfolds, as an inevitability of time, further weighing, coaxing the materials to take on, to burden themselves with more distinctions, more internal musical references, more layers added, accreted, and diminshed,but inevitably onward moving,toward greater thresholds of complexity placing itself in a forever impacted realm of musical statement.So these two pillars"Don" and "Tombeau" were the containers for the three "Improvisations", and something I still don't feel convice. The 'Improvisations' grew as self-contained works,with pitched percussive instruments, piano, harp, celesta, crotales,vibraphone, and percussion as developed "sonnets"that drew particular attention to the single melodic line,and timbres and rarely do they suggest the orchestral forces to come.Perhaps that was the subversive element at work here,to transcend from the private instrospections(of the three "Improvisations") to the overtly theatrical with the orchestral canvas,("Don", and "Tombeau") a labyrinth.
Boulez's aesthetic sense of timeless time is remarkable where the moments always seem to float, as Mallarme's imagery of white, blanche swan, frozen and opaque does. And the musical percussive moments suggests an ambiguity, this rarefied air, are well prepared, this is what time and work over long periods renders to the Boulez aesthetic, this sense of durational telescoping this uninhabited place where only the imagination, where only jouissance in the Lacanian sense only occurs between moments, in the crevices,behind shapes and forms, as spider webs, as encrustations to the text as implications.Christine Schafer, and the Ensemble Intercontemporain gives great hard edges to this music, and Boulezian clarity is an obvious feature.

I can not think of any better improvment about this work when you have Boulez himself as a conductor and "papa" here (a bit more "mellow" too than 10-15 years ago), Christine Schäfer at her best (a good singer in general but she is wonderful, GREAT when it comes to modern music) and best of all... Enseble Intercontemporain is in this too and THIS team is fantastic togheter.

Stunning, modern, a bit "spooky" music and it is extremly well performed and sound is also something extra.

For modernist lovers this is a safe choice but this is def. not for everyone

Readers here are always quick to revolt against 1-star reviews of respected figures, but hear me out here. I'm a big fan of Pierre Boulez, and not a day goes by when I don't delight in some of his great works like "...explosante-fixe...", "Sur Incises", and "Repons". This disc, however, is a disaster from an otherwise heroic composer.

"Pli selon pli" for soprano and orchestra is a lengthy setting of poems by Stephane Mallarme, whose idea of a work in "perpetual expansion" preoccupied Boulez for much of the 1950s. The work grew in stages. It began first with three "Improvisations sur Mallarme" for voice and small ensemble in 1958 and 1959. Then a grim end, "Tombeau" for large orchestra, was added later in 1959. Finally, in 1960 the work gained an introduction with "Don" for large orchestra, whose opening big tutti chord will sound familiar to anyone familiar with Luciano Berio's "Sinfonia" (where it's quoted in the passage "I have a present for you" *whomp*). Originally the order of many elements were left to the discretion of the conductor, a form similar to that of the Piano Sonata No. 3 and "Eclat", but Boulez ultimately fixed the parts in the order they are here. The completed work has been revise several times since its introduction, and various versions have been recorded. This recording is of the latest revision, that of 1989.

Along with "Le Marteau Sans Maitre" of 1953-1955, "Pli selon pli" ushers out the bleep-bloops and Webern-inspired crystal sounds of early Boulez and introduces the interest in wide contrasts of timbre and the warm tones of alto range that marks all of his subsequent work. The forces of a traditional ensemble are accompanied by guitar and mandolin, and while the soprano has a decisive role, her intonations serve more as exotic instrument in the ensemble than a communicator of poetry.

Unfortunately, "Pli selon pli" is a rather unfocused work, for certain moments drag on for far too long than they should. There can indeed be moments of immense wonder here, the general exploration of the ensemble's capabilities, the soprano's wild gesticulations, and especially the grimly beautiful end, which is among Boulez's most frenetic writing. On the 1969 recording on Sony where Boulez leads the soprano Halina Lukomska and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, there's a good aggression about the performance that overcomes the sluggish parts to make for a three-star listening.

On this revised version, however, those dragging moments drag on even longer, and Boulez's conducting lacks any of the old violence. It's over an hour of extremely sluggish pacing, and the result is unlistenable. I can't believe that at the same time Boulez did this revision, he was at work on the new version of "...explosante-fixe...", one of the most wild and exuberant pieces I've ever heard.

"Pli selon pli" for me has never ranked among Boulez's best work, though at least on the Sony recording it was entertaining enough. But I can't find much good to say about this performance.

Oliver Messiaen best captured Boulez's sound world with this pithy quote -- "To his Webernish pursuits he added a bit of my rhythmic restlessness and, above all, a Debussyian shimmer." And of course if you don't like Webern, there's little chance you'll enjoy Boulez. But while Messiaen thought Boulez surpassed Webern, I don't agree. Boulez's longer works such as "Repons" and "Pli Selon Pli" begin with an interesting concept and sound, but run out of energy, a problem Webern avoided through brevity. Stravinsky was to have said of "Pli Selon Pli" that it was "pretty monotonous and monotonously pretty," which is quite apt, I'm afraid. This is, I believe, the third version of the work, which Boulez has continued to alter over the years, but presumably this is the final version. It uses a chamber orchestra (Boulez's own Ensemble Intercontemporain) rather than a full orchestra, and is smoother and more subdued than the original recording with Boulez conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1969 (still available on Sony -- see my review). Unfortunately rather than tightening up the piece, which was already too long at 60 minutes, Boulez indulgently lengthened it to 70 minutes in this 2001 recording.

I am partial to avant-garde music, but I see Boulez as being overrated in critical circles. He was an important theorist of and advocate for the Schoenberg/Webern tendency that came to be known as "serialism," yes, and even more importantly, popularized as a conductor the great works of 20th century modernism. But as a composer, it is my considered opinion that Boulez was more ambitious than accomplished.

Most of the avant-garde music from Pierre Boulez's generation is characterized by noise & chaos, but this cd somehow resonates with such a beautiful profound sense of balance, of deliberateness, of perfect order. That doesn't mean it's melodic. I don't know how he achieves such wholeness from this music, but somehow with his great genius he surely got at the clearest, richest, most meaningful realization of the conception of the music. & I don't think it could be performed with much more acuity & depth than the Ensemble Intercontemporain has here.

I have just purchased this CD (the day it came out!) and from what I've heard, it is amazing, surpassing (but not replacing) Boulez's earlier recording. If you are a fan of Boulez, 20th century music, or music in general, this is a must get.