Farewell, Mr. Boulez!

Farewell, Mr. Boulez!

Yesterday, the world lost one of the great figures of Classical music, Pierre Boulez. Here is his
obituary.

His relationship with the Cleveland Orchestra started when he guest conducted in 1965. At the time, Music Director, George Szell, desiring to focus on the canonical works of symphonic music with his orchestra, sought someone who could balance the programming by bringing a repertoire of new music to Cleveland audiences. Boulez was the perfect choice.

Few music directors at any time would have the humility or awareness that they could not provide everything an orchestra and audience needed in programming and, thus, would seek out an excellent person to complement the orchestra's offering!  I can think of many examples in which a mediocre conductor has been engaged so as not to upstage a music director!

My first encounter with Mr. Boulez (it was always Mr. Boulez with us here in Cleveland) came in the winter of 2002 during my first year with the orchestra. We played Messiaen's "L'Oiseaux Exotiques". I felt as though I was eavesdropping on an old relationship. The orchestra's sound changed the minute he started conducting! His baton-less technique seemed perfectly natural to me from the start. His every gesture was meaningful, helpful and economical. The orchestra could be playing a huge "ff", and with a flick of the wrist he could bring us back to "p". He accomplished this with a small part of one hand while some conductors require a karate chop to get a similar effect.

I'm sure there will be much discussion about his legacy in the coming days. It should make for interesting reading.

I'll close with one anecdote that sums up Boulez's approach to music perfectly. From Time Page in the Washington Post. Read it here

In later years, Mr. Boulez was by all accounts a gracious, soft-spoken and self-effacing gentleman, much beloved by the musicians he worked with. In his composition and his conducting — which he managed with the brisk efficiency of a bank teller giving change — he was the antithesis of the romanticized stereotype of egoistic, heaven-storming musician.
“Perhaps I can explain it best by an old Chinese story,” he said to his biographer, the late Joan Peyser. “A painter drew a landscape so beautifully that he entered the picture and disappeared. For me, that is the definition of a great work — a landscape painted so well that the artist disappears in it.”
- See more at: http://slippedisc.com/2016/01/an-exemplary-boulez-obituary/#sthash.DNmpzSSI.dpuf

n later years, Mr. Boulez was by all accounts a gracious, soft-spoken and self-effacing gentleman, much beloved by the musicians he worked with. In his composition and his conducting — which he managed with the brisk efficiency of a bank teller giving change — he was the antithesis of the romanticized stereotype of egoistic, heaven-storming musician.
“Perhaps I can explain it best by an old Chinese story,” he said to his biographer, the late Joan Peyser. “A painter drew a landscape so beautifully that he entered the picture and disappeared. For me, that is the definition of a great work — a landscape painted so well that the artist disappears in it.”
- See more at: http://slippedisc.com/2016/01/an-exemplary-boulez-obituary/#sthash.DNmpzSSI.dpuf