Concerto Budapest & UMZE Chamber Ensemble A Zeneakadémia saját szervezésű programja

Few have had such an influence on the music of the second half of the 20th century as Pierre Boulez, both as composer and conductor. Despite his seminal role, which can be said without exaggeration to have been of profound significance to the history of music, domestic audiences have little knowledge of the composer’s oeuvre and perhaps only a sketchy outline of his career as a conductor. His most significant works are not embedded into the public’s music consciousness, indeed the majority have never even been performed in concert in Hungary. This Concerto Budapest and UMZE Chamber Ensemble performance features an unusually orchestrated and especially spatially-structured composition from the middle of Boulez’s career (Rituel), and two representative late works (Incises and Sur incises). From the perspective of the formation of the core material these three compositions all have something in common. In Rituel, which was written for eight instrument groups on the death of Bruno Maderna, Boulez recoded the name of Maderna into a tonal sequence; in the solo piano work Incises, and in Sur incises, which further developed the piano composition, being written for three pianos, three harps and three percussion groups, he used a scale derived from the name of Swiss conductor and impresario Paul Sacher. Boulez (90 this year) wrote this work in 1996 in honour of Sacher who was then celebrating his 90th birthday.