The Archive: Pierre Boulez

The Archive: Pierre Boulez

‘The Archive’ presents Pierre Boulez conducting works by Claude Debussy, a composer he considered “[his] constant guide, [his] greatest, [his] permanent model”. This episode starts with a 1966 recording of Boulez with the New Philharmonic Orchestra, interpreting ‘Jeux’, the last and no doubt the boldest orchestral piece Debussy wrote. The 1960s marked the beginning of Boulez’ self-imposed exile from French musical life as a reaction against the policy of André Malraux, the then-minister of culture. ‘Jeux’, through its work on formal deconstruction and at the same time with its increased focus on questions of resonance, is a part of the pieces that have had the greatest influence on Boulez in his own work as a composer. The viewer may be surprised to see Pierre Boulez conducting wearing sunglasses, but the conductor was suffering from facial shingles which made him extremely sensitive to light, yet he wanted to carry out the scheduled recording after all. This does in no way prevent us from benefiting from his highly characteristic technique as a conductor. Eight years later, in 1974, it is once again the music of Debussy that Pierre Boulez performs as main conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Although the way ‘Images’ is written is not as revolutionary as ‘Jeux’ (it is sometimes even giving into an Hispanicism that was then fashionable), Boulez’ clear conducting proves to us that the piece also played its part in the “corruption of accepted standards in sound” that Boulez held Debussy responsible for.