Barenboim and Boulez at the Proms

If modern classical music has a single living incarnation,

it's surely the French composer and conductor,

87-year-old Pierre Boulez.

During the 2012 BBC Proms, a series of concerts featuring

music by Boulez was programmed by conductor Daniel Barenboim

and performed by members of his young orchestra,

the West-Eastern Divan.

In this programme, we're revisiting four of those performances

of this scintillating, seductive music,

starting with Messagesquisse.

This is a miniature concerto for solo cello,

backed by six other cellists.

The music starts slowly with still, spectral sounds,

before exploding into a virtuosic torrent of energy.

It's a ten-minute musical thrill ride

that gets hold of your ears and doesn't let go,

and it's a huge technical challenge for the players,

especially the solo cellist, Hassan Moataz el Molla,

joining six other members of the cello section

of the West-Eastern Divan orchestra, and conductor Daniel Barenboim

to perform Messagesquisse by Pierre Boulez.

APPLAUSE

Pierre Boulez's Messagesquisse, for solo cello and six other cellists.

Six cellists from the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

and their principal cellist, Hassan Moataz el Molla,

performing that piece, astonishingly, from memory,

conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

Hassan Moataz el Molla's feat in memorising that piece

was something that amazed Pierre Boulez himself

when Daniel Barenboim told him about it.

LOUD CHEERING

A year after Pierre Boulez wrote Messagesquisse, he opened IRCAM,

the Institute for Research into Computer and Acoustic Music,

under the streets of central Paris,

and the next work we'll hear was composed there -

Dialogue De L'Ombre Double - Dialogue Of The Double Shadow,

for clarinet and its electronic double.

To introduce it, here's tonight's soloist, principal clarinet

of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Jussef Eisa.

First of all, it is very difficult to play.

I have to say, it was a lot of work.

The technical passages are very intense and you have to work a lot.

Aside from that, if you concentrate on the music, then it's...

It's getting more and more interesting.

This piece consists of six parts, in a way.

It starts with a piece that I recorded. The second I play live.

And the third is a recording. And so on and so on.

The sound engineers, they change the volume of the speakers,

and the sound is supposed to move through the hall,

so that the audience is, like, kind of confused

that sometimes it comes from this side and sometimes from that side.

It's very interesting to hear what they do, actually.

There's a piano behind the stage, and this piano, like,

when I'm recorded, it's being projected into the piano

and the pedal is pushed down, so the resonance in the piano,

this sound also goes into the hall, which is very beautiful.

A beautiful sound, in a way. Very nice colour.

I think Boulez was inspired by a theatre piece,

so while the recording is played, I'm in the dark.

And when the recording stops, and I start playing,

the stage is being lightened.

It's part of the music, in a way, the staging.

This music is like a very special speech, in a way.

It has something like... Like meditation or something like that.

It's sometimes very calm and sometimes it's rude,

and all these different elements are...

Yeah, are the special thing about it.

APPLAUSE

APPLAUSE

Dialogue De L'ombre Double,

Dialogue of the double shadow, By Pierre Boulez.

It was performed by the principal clarinet of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra,

Jussef Eisa, with electronics

from Gilbert Nouno and Jeremie Henrot of Boulez's IRCAM in Paris.

APPLAUSE CONTINUES

Acoustic music for soloist and ensemble next.

Memoriale is a piece dedicated to the memory

of a brilliant young flautist, Lawrence Beauregard,

but there are other reasons behind the title, as Pierre Boulez himself

explained to conductor Mark Wigglesworth back in 1997.

I have called it Memoriale for a different reason,

because as you know, because you have conducted the piece,

there are things which come back and come back,

but irregularly. You have, for instance,

an element which comes back as, element A, let's say,

and then you have an element B, and then element A

and element B come back, but you never know when, exactly.

But you recognise them because they are, I think, characteristic enough.

And then the memory works like that.

I heard, you know, the sound on the violin that I've never heard before.

And I asked the violinist, "What kind of mute did you have?"

And he explained to me the practice mute.

And then he played for me and I said,

"Does it exist for other instruments?"

He said, "Yes, for all strings.

"It does exist."

And I like this type, because of the colour of the sound,

it is so changed. Especially if you have more than one.

In the best French literature, you find always the flute very prominent.

Very prominent. Do not ask me why.

Let's say for instance, pieces for flute alone,

the most famous is Syrinx by Debussy, of course.

But also, Debussy wrote for flute, violin and harp.

Ravel wrote the Medecasse for flute, cello and piano.

You know, the flute is very important in the French chamber literature.

And I think I am one of them.

APPLAUSE

Memoriale is a miniature work, just five minutes long.

It's performed tonight by the principal flute

of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Guy Eshed, with eight players

drawn from the orchestra with conductor Daniel Barenboim.

APPLAUSE

Memoriale by Pierre Boulez.

It was performed there by flautist Guy Eshed,

with eight other musicians of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

under their founder and conductor, Daniel Barenboim.

APPLAUSE CONTINUES

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Pierre Boulez has been an essential force in British musical life

since the 1960s.

He was chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and he's been

a ceaseless explorer

and experimenter as a composer and conductor.

Without him, Proms audiences and audiences all over the world

wouldn't have been exposed to 20th and 21st century repertoire.

Everything from Mahler and Schoenberg to Stockhausen

and Ligeti. And Boulez himself, of course.

The final piece that we are going to hear is also the most recent.

Anthemes II For Solo Violin And Live Electronics.

It's music that's both ancient and modern.

Its 20 minute structure relates to the psalms

that Boulez heard in church as a boy,

but the glittering sophistication of the electronics

is definitively late 20th century.

It's played by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra's leader,

Michael Barenboim, Daniel Barenboim's son.

-Anthemes II, anthems two, by Pierre Boulez.

-APPLAUSE

APPLAUSE

Pierre Boulez's Anthemes II, performed by Michael Barenboim,

leader of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra,

and son of the orchestra's founder and conductor, Daniel Barenboim.

And those ethereal otherworldly electronics

were from Gilbert Nouno and Jeremie Henrot of Boulez's IRCAM.

APPLAUSE CONTINUES

These four performances were all drawn from a series of concerts

that the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra performed at the Proms

in the weeks running up to the opening of the 2012 London Olympics.

They were a real highlight of recent Proms history

in which Barenboim paired Boulez's music

with a complete cycle of symphonies

by the great radical of early 19th-century music,

Ludwig von Beethoven.

Boulez's music is still radical, for sure,

but it also speaks

a language that connects with 21st century audiences.

At the Proms, the music proved more essential than ever.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd