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This new release is dedicated to works by one of the legendary figures in the world of contemporary music, the composer and conductor Pierre Boulez. The disc includes three pieces for small orchestral groups, Memoriale, Derive 1, and the latest version of Derive 2 which is here receiving its world premiere recording.
All three of the pieces featured on this new CD belong to the later output of their composer Pierre Boulez and date from after the opening of IRCAM in 1976. Apart from Mémoriale, which exists in two versions, they call for modest chamber forces without electronic extensions and are conceived as continuations of works in progress. All three also work with compositional techniques derived from canon and heterophony and each of them is dedicated to people close to the composer.
The Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain is an instrumental ensemble with a nucleus of nineteen musicians which can expand to orchestral dimensions if necessary. It was founded in 1992 by its current music director Daniel Kawka and concentrates its activities on the music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Daniel Kawka is the music director of the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain and now established as one of the foremost interpreters of the music of the twentieth and twentyfirst century. He has conducted more than 400 contemporary works, many of which have been world premieres.
Pierre Boulez: Memoriale
Memoriale
Pierre Boulez: Derive I
Derive I
Pierre Boulez: Derive II
Derive II
24th February 2012
****
“"Dérive 1" uses a Feldman-esque palette of woodwind, vibes, piano and strings, and although named for the structural principles of derivation upon which it's based, its drifting manner also suggests the French notion of a dérive as pleasantly aimless wandering....[Dérive 2] is more purposive, its edgy opening pitching nervous strings against animated vibes and marimba”
4th March 2012
“[Dérive 1] is a scintillating, frequently trilling, six minutes. Dérive 2, for 11 instruments — an 80th-birthday tribute to Elliott Carter — is a bewildering 51-minute expansion of the concept, a work whose sheer relentless continuity makes its well-nigh unique in modern music.”
15th March 2012
****
“Experienced live [Dérive 2] can seem too long, but it's a revelation in the superb performance under Daniel Kawka on this disc; the recording is close and vivid, making the music's proliferating lines and abrupt changes of direction seem all-encompassing, and the ebb and flow of their inner tensions and resolutions are constantly involving.”
July 2012
“With its creamy centres encased in slabs of fruity roughage, then sprinkled with hundred-and-thousands of vibraphone and marimba notes, Derive 2 sounds like birthday cakes ought to...Boulez turns the fucntion of hocketing against itself...Daniel Kawka's intelligent, plugged-in direction locates meaning within the labyrinth.”
May 2012
“Daniel Kawka has a grasp of the idiom second to none, while the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain (EOC) he founded two decades ago is an outfit whose virtuosity renders this music with panache likely to surprise anyone who regards Boulez as an austere aesthete...Fabrice Junger handles the translucent alternation of verses and refrains with restrained eloquence.”
September 2012
*****
“Kawka is clearly in awe of Boulez but fortunately he doesn't handle the music with reverence. These performances are thrillingly virtuoso, and the recorded sound has an edge-of-the-seat immediacy that beats Boulez's own recordings...Boulez's logic may seem fearsome when explained, but in performances as good as these, it carries you irresistably along.”
Click on any of the works listed above for alternative recordings.
Memoriale
