SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Pierre Boulez, 85^th Birthday Celebration: Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie (soprano), James Baker (conductor), Talea Ensemble, Miller Theatre at Columbia University, 6.12.2010 (BH)

Boulez: Dérive I (1984)

Boulez: 12 Notations (1945)

Boulez: Improvisation I sur Mallarmé: Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd’hui” (1957)

Boulez: Improvisation II sur Mallarmé: “Une dentelle s’abolit” (1957)

Boulez: Dérive II (1988/2006, United States premiere)

Some unexpected illumination was the result of the Talea Ensemble’s incisively played 85^th birthday tribute to Pierre Boulez, part of Miller Theatre’s long-running Composer Portraits series. And as parties go, you could hardly find a more eclectic guest list, ranging from Columbia University students, to middle-aged fans who have admired the master for decades, to an almost-102-year-old Elliott Carter. (Photographers were having a field day, snapping the two birthday boys together.)

My hunch is that not many of the young composers in the audience, even at age 19, were writing something like Pierre Boulez’s 12 Notations, and this set of short pieces for solo piano shows the composer sketching like mad. These little amuses bouches—as Paul Griffiths so aptly describes, alternating “between suppleness and intense stampede”—give vivid glimpses of the glittering towers the composer would create later. Anthony Cheung gave these squibs a fastidious (not to be confused with “staid”) performance that revealed every last bit of the composer’s precocity.

Soprano Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie seemed close to ideal in the two Improvisations sur Mallarmé, in which Boulez sets the great poet’s enigmatic texts to (at the time) equally enigmatic sounds. (The two here would eventually find their way into Boulez’s longer Pli selon pli—“fold by fold.”) Filling each syllable with an icy sensuality (not as oxymoronic as it might seem), Mackenzie melded with the musicians in a precise, intelligent performance that had many in the audience cheering.

Despite the titles, and although Dérive I and Dérive II were written just four years apart, they could hardly be confused with each other, especially since the latter received an expansive makeover. The former, written as a tribute to William Glock of the BBC, feels like a short tone poem, shimmering, hovering, trembling in mid-air. Trills and tremolos dominate; instrumental colors seem to scurry below some kind of translucent surface. It made a gorgeous, exacting opening to the evening, especially in the wildly capable hands of the Talea players.

Its subsequent cousin, however, is a different animal altogether (and at roughly 50 minutes, considerably longer). Written using the same series of chords that anchor Répons (1984), Dérive II was penned as an homage to Mr. Carter, and filled with dense group episodes, oddly touching solo turns, and wave after wave of rhythmic exultation. Originally about twenty minutes long, Boulez reworked it in 2006, more than doubling it in size. But despite the dazzling performance by the musicians—adroitly led by conductor James Baker, and with stamina that belied what must have been exhausting rehearsals—I left feeling a bit overwhelmed, numbed, ready for it to end. (And I add, few Boulez works have left me in such a state.) A second hearing might produce more insights (this was its United States premiere), but in the short term, the piece felt like a heavy dessert added to an otherwise vibrantly conceived menu.

Bruce Hodges