The twentieth century continues

Formally, the death of Pierre Bouleza puts an end to the history of the musical twentieth century. Having survived for twenty-six years, Luigi Nono, for thirteen-Luciano Berio, ten Liegoti for ten, for nine-the Karlhainz Shtokhausen, the last of the great generation of the composers of the second avant-garde, born in the mid-1920s and determined the musical landscape of post-war Europe. Grigory Revzin once wrote that the necrologist is akin to the monument: the meaning of the necrologist is to say that a person was in the center of the world, but now he is gone, but the world remains. It’s not easy to reflect on Boulez in such a vein: the musical twentieth century seemed to end many years ago, and Boulez continued to be for a long time, so when the Facebook commentators (and only they would only) accompany the author of the “hammer without a master” on the last journey “The era” left, every time I want to ask what exactly? Boulez formed several eras in a row, forming worlds around him - and invariably leaving them far behind in his constant movement forward. The child of the “summer of modernism” , he survived the autumn of the twentieth century and his winter, having managed to keep his face even in the slush of the millennial off -season, following his two main virtues - elegance and insolence, daring elegance and elegant impudence.

A good quarter of articles in the encyclopedia of music of the twentieth century (sections “Serialism” , “Aleatorika” , “Experiments with Electronics”), from many of its texts-listen to at least the second book of “Structures” with Pierre-Loran Emar, the late edition of “Pli Selon Pli” with Barbara Hannigan or Répons under the Bulet-Laran, The author of the author - sparks from the eyes are still pouring regularly. Boulez Political invented and built the institutional reality that French music lives today-not only Ensemble Intercontemporain and Ircam , but also L'Op é Ra Bastille , and the Parisian Philharmonic with its modern two-part structure. When a year ago, Libe-Maighores undertook to celebrate the nineteenth anniversary of the Boulez-Dirier by the publication of final anthologies, it turned out about this: in the set of Sony Classical - 67 discs in the Deutsche Grammophon integral - 44 albums with music of the twentieth century, 14 disks of the Maleovsky cycle, 10 “living” discs of the concert series LE Domaine Musical - Plus, as if all this was not enough, 14 disks of Erato anthology. The Grammy Prize laureate, he became twenty -six times. The release of his last album was dedicated to 88th birthday.

It will not be a stretch that we live in a world, which is largely designed by Boulez once.

I do not want to multiply the banality about the scale of the personality and the directly proportional ability to self -actualization in different historical and cultural circumstances, but he really lived incredible in terms of duration, diversity, saturation and density of events. The fact that, for example, the fact that Boulez, boosting in May 1952 Stravinsky was somehow weak, is somehow weakly fired in my head, and Boulez, who smiled affably with the glossy cover of Gramophone Magazine in 2015 is the same person. A person whose fate becomes a lot to understand, if only by the confident dashing of his theatrical collaborations: he began in the late 1940s with Jean-Louis Barro in Petit Marigny , in 1976, together with Patris Sherro, celebrated the centenary of the Nibelung Ring, releasing one of the most important performances in the latest history of the musical theater-so that, having worked with Maurice Bezhar and Pina Baush (she put her legendary “Spring”, she put it on Buleza’s record), return to Bayroit in 2004 with Bayroit in 2004 Parsifal already in Christoph Shlingenzif. From Barro to Schlingenzif: this spectacular career clinic is difficult to refuse paradoxical hypnotic beauty.

The volume of his figure was generally determined by the sum of paradoxes. At some point, it became obvious that he was the last representative of the tradition of the great composers-divisions; Gustav Malera should be considered a direct predecessor (not by chance at the turn of the millennia, his symphonies sounded more accurately, of course, at Boulez), and the founder of tradition - Hector Berlioz. It was an unexpected conjecture: he never gave out his titanic genealogy either by the appearance or habits-the owner of introvert, extremely functional and emphasized by not needing the visual hall of conducting technology, he preferred invariable shirts from Lacoste , and on Standing. OVATIONS in the past forty years has habitually responded as if it were a law-like (and at the same time clearly theatrical) shock of his shoulders. By some miracle, Boulez was least like Monstre Sacré , although he had every reason to be.

He was categorically not satisfied with the fact that his twentieth century gradually became the property of history. He was interested to continue him.

Which, however, did not prevent Bouleza at all in history with the brightest passionaries - a brater and a polemicist, the author of the Schenberg Deadweight Schenberg program text, who called for the opera theaters to blow up (at the beginning of the zero, this early statement even cost him an arrest in Switzerland for inciting terrorism), preferential, suspicious and vengeful a politician who was able to effectively block oxygen, detain the advancement of colleagues along the career stairs and love to arrange brilliant in their stinging ruthlessness public flogging to everyone whose Modus Vivendi was alien to him. Olivier Messian? The author of "music for brothels." American minimalists? "Too primitive to be interesting." Dmitry Shostakovich? "Mahler of the Third Except." He knew how to and, it seems, loved to annoy; It is today, in accordance with the moment, they write about it either well, or nothing (read the obituary of two outstanding American musical critics, Paul Griffiths in The New York Times and Tom Page in The Washington Post , and experience a feeling of burning envy: a) Western print media; b) Western musical criticism) - as if just recently the New Yorker He did not celebrate the 75th anniversary of Boulez with the publication of the canonical text of Alex Ross Ross "Godfather."

Some sixteen (fifteen, ten, five-the necessary to emphasize) years ago he seemed to many archaic, boring and generally démodé , annoying with his elitarism, his authority, performance and what else not. They wanted to put Bouleza to the museum, to spend the living classics across the department, and he was categorically not satisfied with the fact that his twentieth century gradually became the property of history. He was interested in continuing it, and at the conductor’s remote control, and at the composer table a decade after a decade, engaged in the revision and updating of the old, perceiving both his own music and the history of the music of the last century as one continuous work in Progress . The active repertoire of the Boulez-Diriger is a debit, Berg, Weberne, Schounberg, Bartok, Rael and Stravinsky, from later music-a little Messian, Berio, Ligeti, Bertuistla and Carter, Minimum minimorum , statistical error. The twentieth century was for him a century of modernist art, in which he saw the climax of the history of music and an inexhaustible source of energy. From an earlier repertoire, only two were truly interested in him-the forerunner of modernism Wagner and Mahler: he was interested to observe how the 19th century ended in their scores and began XX. All this Boulez played throughout his life, repeatedly returning to the same names (“sacred spring”, this Bible of modernism, he rewritten four (!) Times), introducing the legacy of modernism into active use and gradually making it the mainstream of the modern Western musical scene.

In the head, the fact that, for example, the fact that Boulez, whistling in May 1952 Stravinsky, was somehow faded, is somehow weakly fired, and Boulez, who smiled affably with the glossy cover of the Gramophone Magazine in 2015, is the same person.

He generally influenced the formation of musical reality surrounding us as few of the largest composers and performers of the twentieth century-it will not be a stretch that we live in a world, which is largely designed by Boulez. One eloquent, but quite private for his biography, the case says a lot: in 1966, Boulez was punished in Bayroit Vagneri Parsifal-today this is the first approach of the master to the “solemn stage mystery” to compare with the “official” record made on the green hill four years later. An analytically verified, architectonically clear and structurally perfect interpretation caused the effect of an exploding bomb. It also makes a strong impression today: radically accelerating the familiar course of the parsifal musical time and, as a whole, rethinking the program code of Wagnerian music, half a century ago, Boulez anticipated the discoveries of the beginning of the 21st century, preparing the ground for revolutionary interpretations of Roger Norrington , Thomas Hengelbroke and Ivan Fisher .

All that remains for us now is to listen to his executed icy perfection of the recording. Not so much, if you figure it out: the vast majority of Boulez’s albums-the monuments of the golden age of the record-industry, over the years, their weight will only grow. It is necessary, in principle, everything, in general, everything makes sense to listen to (and then more than once), in general, it makes sense to pay special attention to the grandiose Malera cycle, work on which with four orchestras (Vienna, Chicago, Cleveland) stretched for two decades. From today's perspective, I would like to hear a lot in Maler in a different way-in the second Boulez, over time began to lose to Yurovsky and Yarvi , in the fifth- Norrington and Fisher . The interpretations of at least two symphonies remain unsurpassed - the third and sixth recorded with Viennese philharmonicists. The sixth with her merciless clarity and the only true Tempo GIUSTO , in comparison with which any other pace seems not to be the same - from the kind of records that they take with them to an uninhabited island. During the opportunity, it is worth capturing the album of the piano concerts of Maurice Ravel with Christian Zimmerman-this is perhaps the best that happened with performing and with sound recording in the blessed 90s.