Royal Albert HallKensington Gore, London, Greater London, SW7 2AP, United Kingdom
Dates/times in London time zone
Festival: BBC PromsProgramme
| Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770-1827) | Quintet for Piano and Winds in E flat major, Op.16 | |
| Boulez, Pierre (1925-2016) | Le Marteau sans maître |
Performers
| Members of West-Eastern Divan Orchestra | |
| François-Xavier Roth | Conductor |
| Hilary Summers | Mezzo-soprano |
After Beethoven’s Quintet for piano and winds,
written soon after his arrival in Vienna, Pierre Boulez
himself directs his breakthrough piece, Le marteau
sans maître (‘The Hammer without a Master’),
arguably the single most influential composition of
the 1950s. By interlocking settings of three poems
by the Surrealist poet René Char with commentaries
from specific sub-groups of its ensemble, Boulez
established a new kind of rapport between text and
music through unsuspected continuities of timbre –
a labyrinth of exotic sound at once tightly organised
and delirious.Update, 10 July: Pierre Boulez will be unable to conduct due to recent eye surgery; François-Xavier Roth will take his place.
written soon after his arrival in Vienna, Pierre Boulez
himself directs his breakthrough piece, Le marteau
sans maître (‘The Hammer without a Master’),
arguably the single most influential composition of
the 1950s. By interlocking settings of three poems
by the Surrealist poet René Char with commentaries
from specific sub-groups of its ensemble, Boulez
established a new kind of rapport between text and
music through unsuspected continuities of timbre –
a labyrinth of exotic sound at once tightly organised
and delirious.Update, 10 July: Pierre Boulez will be unable to conduct due to recent eye surgery; François-Xavier Roth will take his place.
