Boulez: Notations ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester ∙ Manfred Honeck

[@lotharlamurtra7924]

This music is pure beauty. And the rendering is very good. Boulez forever.

[@vMusica.]

There is no beauty in this crap, stop being crazy. The king is naked.

[@jankovskialeksandar]

This is remarkably beautiful! Thank you hr-Sinfonierochester!

[@KrisKringle14]

This composition is really outstanding. Maybe not "at first glance", but the more you listen, it gets greater and greater. Maybe one of the most important works of the post WWII era. Reminds me in some parts of the gorgeous "Five pieces for Orchestra" by Schoenberg...

[@clarinetjo]

Really great music, nothing is useless and yet it conjures a strikingly expressive set of images. The second one played here is made of the same stuff from which the most "magical" novels i've read are made, so to speak. I really enjoy it ! Thanks !

[@bhodgesnyc]

Listening on what would have been Boulez's 99th birthday, and the performance is appropriately celebratory. PS, is there nothing this fabulous orchestra can't play? They are terrific here.

[@saacomposer]

Notation I - 00:38 Notation III - 03:53 Notation IV - 08:14 Notation VII - 10:27 Notation II - 17:14

[@user-he4em5zx8s]

Where r rest parts

[@notaire2]

Gut artikulierte und perfekt synchronisierte Aufführung dieses modernen Meisterwerks mit farbenprächtigen Töne aller Instrumente. Der Dirigent ist echt genial!

[@boonrutsirirattanapan100]

Boulez achieved in keeping mystery at any course. Bravo and Thank you!

[@CourtneyBryceHilton]

Amazing pieces, and great performance!

[@Cleekschrey]

Perfect music.

[@mikern2001]

This conductor certainly knows what he is doing.

[@theingabo212]

Notation II is bloody brilliant!

[@smits98]

Stunning

[@Philhamm]

If Schoenberg's Five Pieces are a cube, Boulez's Notations are a tesseract.

[@craigkowald3055]

His best work I think.

[@javiervivanco919]

Magnificencia tímbrica¡

[@Robert...Schrey]

1:41 dry fingers ?

[@alexandretaranne4503]

je doit faire un exposé sur boulez je ne sais pas si cette musique le caractérise

[@lotharlamurtra7924]

Oui. Tout à fait.

[@conw_y]

IV sounds a bit like Messiaen’s Turangalila.

[@paulsomers6048]

The problem with post-Webernism when large forces are used is that the impact is less than the sum of its parts. The virtue of Webern's music is its crystalline clarity, its lack of "sound smearing". The music glistens, as it were. But with Boulez, even in the Notation II, which has Webern's "brevity as the soul of wit", its sheer size of forces renders it clunky with no grace. If anyone could convince me this music is really touching, it would be Manfred Honek and the hr-Sinfonieorchester. There were some moments of actual beauty, but only moments, so the music was reduced to a series of orchestration affects of varying effect. Its difficulty of execution was buried in the mass of sound. I couldn't hear the music for all the notes.

[@paulsomers6048]

I couldn't hear the musicians for all the notes.

[@MorganHayes_Composer.Pianist]

Well said. In essence, the 'Notations' are more engaging in the original piano version. With that said, as a teenager I was knocked sideways by them when I saw him rehearsing them at the Barbican/London.

[@KrisKringle14]

If you compare the development of classical music of the 19th and of the 20th century, there are a lot of parallels. To my point of view, Webern was the "Beethoven" of the 20th century: A musical personality whose work is so groundbreaking that no one after him can ignore what he has acchieved. And, yet, like in the 19th century, when young composers did not want to sound Like Beethoven, after WWII, the young composer generation, with all respect to Webern, tried to find a personal voice. So did Boulez. His attempt to find a personal voice is sometimes too serious. Yet, Webern is "no God". Why should I reject the works of Boulez because he sounds different? In fact, I love the variety and diversity of classical music after WWII, and am happy that they did not stay too long on serialism...

[@jean-francoisbrunet2031]

Funny how after having powerfully contributed to destroy the very notion of melody or rhythm, Boulez returns, in the last piece (is it Notation II?), to, not even rhythm, but pulse. This piece is rife with a subtle nostalgia for what music ought to be, after all (as someone else says better below: "regret about his contributions to the destruction of tradition").

[@BetonBrutContemporary]

I think after all, he finally realised that he cannot escape from them..and embraced :)

[@kodesos4750]

DEP

[@JohnBorstlap]

Beautiful and fascinating sound... brilliantly scored. Regrettable that it is not music: it says merely itself, there is nothing 'behind' the notes.

[@JohnBorstlap]

John Borstlap PS: There are snippets of musical gestures here & there, reminiscnences of Schoenberg and Berg, so something musical is hinted at in the background. Surprising is a sudden appearance of a perfect fifth, after which the sound goes to all sides again. All invention is in the sonic surface. What a waste!

[@klscomus]

+John Borstlap Hmmm...I find this to be an incredible work, but compared to some of his later works it sounds more like elaborate sketches for what's yet to come, or embellished miniatures that have a finite concision. In some ways the last Notation sounds as if it came more from the pen of Jerry Goldsmith (think Planet of the Apes) or Leonard Rosenman when he was able to write a 12-tone score for a movie. It does bring one to ask this question: what if Boulez were courted to do a film score? Parts of this would work in a suspense or horror film, and that's not denigrating the music nor Boulez's talents, but you have to wonder if he also had some sort of visual in mind, and maybe a closet admirer of some film composers?

[@JohnBorstlap]

klscomus: PB held Tchaikovsky and Sibelius in concempt, so it is utterly unlikely that he ever consciously heard any film music. The atmospheric morbidity of his oeuvre is structurally built-in, it is the horror that nihilism and over-intellectualiation brings with them. Most atonal 'music' has this morbid, anxious character (Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, etc.)

[@klscomus]

+John Borstlap: I disagree with your assessment about the majority of atonal music having a morbid, anxious character, but...to each their own, I suppose. I believe that Boulez was aware of film scores, but for the most part dismissed a vast majority of composers who did not ascribe to his musical aesthetic. By calling John Adams' opera The Death of Klinghoffer "bad film music" certainly showed that Boulez held contempt for the status quo of film composers that did not wish to write music of their time, but of a bygone era, something he couldn't fathom. In my notes for Tribute Film Classic's recording of Bernard Herrmann's score for Fahrenheit 451, I mention how both composers felt about each other's music, one factual (Herrmann) and the other hearsay (Boulez). Apparently he did know about film music, but it simply did not move him in an emotional or intellectual way.

[@EdwinCulverMusic]

But there is soooooooo much behind the notes - check out Boulez's own analysis on "Explore the Score" for the original piano version of Notations. Then compare the structure of Notations I to the expanded, orchestrated version here. He took something that was already brilliant, and somehow made it even more exciting.

[@JohnBorstlap]

My suspicion is that Boulez, in working-up an old piano piece from 1947, suffered from nostalgia and regret about his contributions to the destruction of tradition, and wanted to sniff a bit of the 'Luft von anderen Planeten'. Maybe because of his ample conducting of traditional music, and he himself getting older.

[@JohnBorstlap]

+Otto van den Aardweg Ken ik niet goed; wat ik er in het verleden van heb gehoord, deed niet naar nadere kennismaking verlangen..... Maar er zijn mensen, zelfs gediplomeerde musicologen, die serieus beweren dat PB in zijn pianowerken dezelfde expressieve waarden nastreefde als Chopin (Ralph van Raat, doctoraalscriptie UvA).

[@JohnBorstlap]

+Otto van den Aardweg Ken ik niet goed; wat ik er in het verleden van heb gehoord, deed niet naar nadere kennismaking verlangen..... Maar er zijn mensen, zelfs gediplomeerde musicologen, die serieus beweren dat PB in zijn pianowerken dezelfde expressieve waarden nastreefde als Chopin (Ralph van Raat, doctoraalscriptie UvA).

[@OK-pg6mv]

sicherlich sehr gut gespielt, aber trotzdem grausam für die Ohren. Man kann am Schluss förmlich die Erleichterung in den Gesichter der Musiker, dass das Zeugs endlich vorbei ist, sehen.

[@Empyreanabove]

For two days now I have been listening to a bird singing in a nearby garden as I sit out at the back of my house. The sounds he/she produces sound more like music to me than this....stuff (for want of a better term). They are also far more pleasant to listen to.

[@monsterlove2323]

Then turn off your KZbin and go sit in your garden for the rest of your life.

[@KrisKringle14]

Seems like this composition is challenging your regular, traditional understanding of music. Well, by the way, that's one of the objectives Boulez had with his works 😉

[@Gwailo54]

There have been several items I have seen on TV which demonstrate that slowed down birdsong is not as perfectly melodic as humans wish to make it sound. Cuckoos excepted. 😉