Conducts Webern

Boulez (Artist), Pollet (Artist), Oelze (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 14, 1995)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Deutsche Grammophon
• ASIN: B000001GIU
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #303,073 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Splendid Performances of Webern's Early Works, March 27, 2002

By 

John Kwok (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Conducts Webern (Audio CD)

Pierre Boulez leads his Ensemble InterContemporain and pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard in a series of elegant performances of these early Webern pieces; many of which are also composed for choirs and/or single vocal soloists. Although these are early works, they are by no means juvenile marginalia, but instead, are well-thought expressions of Webern's interest in Serialism. I strongly recommend this CD as an excellent introduction of Webern's early scores from the intriguing perspective of Boulez, Webern's foremost interpreter. The sound quality is quite superb.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Totally captivating & imaginative performances, March 24, 2007

By 

Scriabinmahler (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Conducts Webern (Audio CD)

Boulez' masterful readings of Webern's early chamber and choral works are well worth adding to his complete survey of the composer's opus. All works are performed by the finest musicians including the pianist P-L Aimard renowned for his Debussy and Ravel recordings, two outstanding sopranos with pure-toned voice and BBC singers, each performance totally captivating and very imaginative. Beautifully recorded with details and realistic sound image.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Whither O Will-o'-the-Wisp?. . ., December 4, 2011

By 

Sébastien Melmoth (Hôtel d'Alsace, PARIS) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Conducts Webern (Audio CD)

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Whither O Will-o'-the-Wisp?. . .

The will-o'-the-wisp is a phenomenon which occurs in late summer at dank northern seaside climes where the combination of sunny daytime warmth and twilight cool moisture in the earth and atmosphere produces a clearly distinctive mist about 3' above the ground, released and visible from early-evening till early-morning.

The quality of Webern's tiny oeuvre is similarly eerie, wispish, and elusive.

A native Viennese, Webern earned his Ph.D. writing his dissertation on Gothic Flemish polyphony, the study of which permanently influenced his mature work characterized by ascetic palindromy and `Klangfarbenmelodie' (ou `mélodie de timbres' i.e., sound-color-melody)--a method of musical pointillism.

This disc is reissued in its entirety as disc 3 of Boulez's Complete Webern, and opens with P.-L. Aimard and the Ensemble InterContemporain's exquisitely corrupt realization of Webern's dizzyingly nauseating late-Romantic Piano Quintet (1907), featuring what must surely be the most prurient and malodorous melody ever penned, über-Rabelaisian in its fusty pungency.

With this grotesque essay in Fin-de-Siècle fabulae Webern seems to have frightened himself, for thereafter he quickly reset to the default humility and Romish textual preferences he maintained till his untimely demise.

These minimalistic works of enigmatic fantômesquery constantly aspire towards Schönberg's Herzgewäsche--(a work Webern shrewdly saw as `the summit of music', as at the work's climax the soprano takes an hair-raising expressionistic leap to high-F over C).

There are also direct parallels with Pierrot Lunaire and the Serenade.

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