Boulez, The Sun of Waters

Program

Concert broadcast live on Philharmonie Live on January 20, 2021, and pre-recorded on Philharmonie Live.

Le Soleil des eaux, a major work from its first period, inspired by René Char and reworked many times by the composer, is performed tonight in its 1968 version. The connection with Debussy is already evident, especially in the shimmering, flowing orchestral writing of the first part, when the second part is much more violent. Very different, Initiale is presented as a brass ensemble fanfare, whose energy evolves towards hypnotic depth.

Precision, objectivity of the poetic approach, a sharp sense of colour: we still find what Boulez owes to Debussy in La Mer, with its sonorous moire, its unprecedented orchestral lights, its pulverised and prismatic motifs. But the Ravelian universe, represented by the “war” work that is the Concerto for the Left Hand, is no less representative of this ethic of form and clarity, where the modernist gesture never abdicates the sense of restraint and control.