Boulez: A Master Speaks Anew
[September 2005.]
Pierre BOULEZ: Le marteau sans maître (1953-55); Dérive
1 (1984); Dérive 2 (1988/2002). Hilary
Summers (mezzo-soprano); members of Ensemble InterContemporain, Pierre
Boulez (cond.). Deutsche Grammophon 00289 477 5327.
There may be no post-World War II work for voice and instrumentalists
more famous than Pierre Boulez’s 1950s song cycle Le marteau
sans maître. The music’s striking mix of alto voice
(here a mezzo-soprano), alto flute, guitar, viola, vibraphone, xylorimba
and percussion, deft interweaving of instrumental and vocal passages
and the simultaneous, seamless unfolding of three separate cycles-within-a-cycle — to
name but a few of its qualities — set it apart. It is also a work
disdained by the less adventurous for its supposed rigor and inflexibility.
The music operates for many listeners as a line of demarcation, no doubt.
Time has withered its novel effects, but the content remains as strong
today as at its inception, 50 years ago. This recording is the first
on a disc to be easily available stateside. Albeit more confined and
moderate in approach — in other words, “safe” — it
compares favorably with three LPs in my collection. Technically, the
performance seems note-perfect and the music remains thrilling; however,
the verve of earlier recordings has been replaced with a sense of familiarity.
Summers and a sextet of EIC’s finest musicians perform almost mechanically,
perhaps because they didn’t need to learn any new techniques. For
earlier performers, this was difficult sailing. Today the music’s
challenges are commonplace, its direction clearly defined from the outset. Le
marteau sans maître is not at all an open-form work, and
yet earlier musicians brought more creativity to these same firmly fixed
notes. I’m not complaining, exactly — quibbling, rather.
Precision is never to be discounted.
Dérive 1 and 2 are vastly
different creations. Dérive 1, marked Très
lent, immuable, a mere six minutes long, features a stately prologue
and epilogue, and an explosive middle replete with undulations from the
six instrumentalists involved: flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano
and vibraphone. The music has been subtly revised since it was last recorded
on Erato, but the overall experience is unchanged, and the charming
Paul Sacher motif (the notes E-flat, A, C, B, E, D) remains its principal
joy. Dérive 1 is a pristine, undervalued jewel,
easy to overlook. By contrast, Dérive 2 (a first
recording), marked Très rapide, is nearly 25 minutes in
length. The work is scored for English horn, clarinet, bassoon, French
horn, violin, viola, cello, harp, piano, vibraphone and marimba. The
drive of the earlier work’s middle section has been transformed
into a nigh-raucous moto perpetuo, like nothing else in
Boulez’s catalogue. As always, the composer amazes with his control
of timbre and the range of variation his limited instrumentation achieves.
The sublime interplay amongst ever-shifting factions of the ensemble
identifies Boulez’s continually refreshing craft, as compelling
today as ever.
It should come as no surprise that the musicians of EIC
play with an enthusiasm second to none. Even in the somewhat mechanical Marteau,
these virtuosi are never less than convincing.