Boulez: Structures pour deux pianos [Import]

Pierre Boulez (Composer), Alfons Kontarsky (Performer), Aloys Kontarsky (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Alfons Kontarsky, Aloys Kontarsky
• Composer: Pierre Boulez
• Audio CD (December 8, 1993)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Wergo Germany
• ASIN: B000025R10
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #349,711 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Premier Livre: 1. Stuck

2. Premier Livre: 2. Stuck

3. Premier Livre: 3. Stuck

4. Deuxieme Livre: 1. Stuck

5. Deuxieme Livre: 2. Stuck

Editorial Reviews

1965 recordings of Boulez works from Alfons & Aloys Kontarsky.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 'Structures I' a modern Masterpiece, June 7, 1999

By A Customer

Boulez's Structures I and II are perhaps some of the most important pieces written in the twentieth century. Structures I is the first lucid essay in serialism, flowing from Messiaen's earlier 'Mode de Valuers et D'Intensites,' even expounding on some solutions to problems that occured in 'Mode de Valuers...' such as the fixed register of each pitch and the general rigidness of the structure. Stockhausen's 'Kreuzspiel' is contemporary to Stuctures Ia, which shows the readiness and speed, with which skill in serial composition came to Boulez, as where Boulez corrects problems and ties the work together for the greatest possible comprehensibility with such complex materials, Stockhausen is beset with a rather muddled work aurally, and really produces an inferior copy of the 'Mode de Valuers...'. Boulez produced Structures Ic and Ib later, of which Ib is an essay in the possible flexibility of the serial method. Structures I is a place to begin before examining works such as 'Pli Selon Pli' and 'Le Marteau sans Maitre.' Boulez stated that Structures I was to be his 'Art of Fugue' for the serial method. Indeed, the work spells out the serial method for the composer in analysis, while giving the simplest vision for serialism (monotimbral, berevity of the work overall, the simple organization of Ia and Ic) for the ear to begin the comprehension of an exciting genre of 'modernism.' In an understanding of Boulez, Structures is a place to start (for those who have never heard 12 - Tone music before, I recommend starting with the music of Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern before listening to Structures. Schoenberg's 'Pierrot Lunaire' and Webern's 'Symphonie, Op 21' are good places to begin) Structures II is another essay in the flexiblity of serial method, and of Boulez's 'literary' conception of music. Structures II contains 'paranthesis' that a pianist can elect (before the performance) to play or not to play. They are ideas that Boulez did not deem essential to the work, but are extra thoughts he feels add dimensions to the work. Structures II exposes the possibilties of such 'Mobile form,' though it was not a leader in the field, as Structures I was. Aloys Kontarsky has much experience with 'moderist' music, having played under Stockhausen and others. The performance by the Kontarskys is good, and this is the only recording that I know of, in which Structures I is available, which makes this recording an excellent buy, as there is no contest in the performances. Structures II is also available on the Deutsche Grammaphon recording of Boulez's '...explosante fixe'.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I could not speak, and my eyes failed..., April 19, 2002

By 

Dizaner (Perth, Western Australia) - See all my reviews

Usually I don't really feel the need to write a piece when someone has already done so admirably, as is the case here, but I was listening to Structures 1 the other night (as you do) and I for the first time in a long time I was really moved. I know that sounds rather tepid, but I was. Ambiguously moved is the way to describe it because I wasn't happy, nor sad, etc... but I was affected; for a brief instant I felt different about myself and the world I daily re-create. For that moment it was the most beautiful piece of music that I could imagine.

It is often remarked how some of Stravinsky's most severe neo-classical music, those works like Symphony of Psalms or the Mass, where he tries to avoid all sodden affectations, are perhaps by virtue of this enforced restraint, curiously emotive. I think the same things applies to this work by Boulez, though in a radically different way.

I was born in 1980 so I can no longer really understand the Modernist project in the same way that Boulez 'felt' it. I do feel what may be the sames urges and impulses but they manifest themselves in different ways for different reasons, and demand radically different responses (and I certainly don't mean writing a Symphony in D Major, and anyway I'm not a composer), and feel perhaps conceptually closer in my listening to, for example, Richard Barrett - at any rate, those who have moved it on to a new, almost hyper-modern, stage.

Therefore Structures for me stands more as an historical document of a certain place and certain time and a certain way of seeing the world. For all its radical 'newness' it still follows the mythic archetype of destruction and renewal. It is a work of extremes born out of an extreme situation, and a need to surpass what were then the sup(im)posed limitations of human subjectivity.

The oft quoted but never used Klee title for 1a, 'At the end of fruitful lands...', seems more poignant than ever as we recede back into the lush undergrowth of contemporary culture where our every need and desire is contructed half an instant before it is half satisifed. The fact that many people born the same year as me will never know about Structures 1 makes me sad, not because they will miss out on some 'high art' or other such [stuff], but because they will miss out on a profoundly motivating exeperience that could help them to once again hack their way out of the jungle.

The paradox here is that music at its most ramified and 'artificial' is also music at its most fundamentally powerful. Forget what most people say, this is beautiful music, beautifully played. It is the primal scream of a generation who had reached the end of one path and were about to begin building many more.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fragments shards and splinters of high serialized music, April 4, 1999

By A Customer

We can speak now of early Boulez the composer. After he began his ocean-hopping career as a conductor composition was not a consummate endeavor. Boulez's genius however is that he has remained sensitive musician visionary, and not many in what was the avant-garde can say that. These "Structures" for Two Pianos is like a granite boulder in the history of the European avant-garde. Boulez's compositional language really never took root here in the United States. Sure there were imitators, but who listens to them today. Boulez was out to make a name for himself, and back then his aesthetic agenda concerned the extremes and endpoint of music. So every parameter and millisecond rhythm is subjected to analysis and projection. Book One is mesmerizing, every timbre of the piano is utilized to the extent that a dozen or so types of attack of the piano keys was identified. This music is has a polar expressive realms of extreme violence to elegant poetic-like simplicity All three piano pedals are utilized to to help create this ethereal world of internal serial relationships. If you never heard Boulez's music before you will not like how the piano is assaulted. This is not a place to start, but to end. Start your Boulez odyssey with his "Notations" for Orchestra. The Kontarsky's have no equal in two-piano literature which actually has a formidable body of work. Again primarily European. Your in good hands with The Kontarskys.