Pierre Boulez: Juxta Positions
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Boulez, Eclat, Schefler, SommerDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0; German (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0; Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0; Dutch (Subtitled); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); German (Subtitled); Japanese (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Classical, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 142 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-02-21
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Juxtapositions
Movie Reviews of Pierre Boulez: Juxta Positions
Movie Review: Revelatory, a must-have for any Boulez fan
Summary: 5 Stars
This DVD, one of the latest in Juxtapositions' excellent series on contemporary music, collects two documentaries about French composer Pierre Boulez. It has so much to recommend itself in its coverage of a perpetually underappreciated composer, its helpfulness in understanding the works better, and its 142 minutes of video when classical labels all too often charge full-price for less than an hour.
First up is ECLAT, a 1994 documentary by Frank Scheffer that has conductor Ed Spanjaard and the Amsterdam-based Nieuwe Ensemble preparing to perform Boulez's 1965 piece "Eclat". The piece was written during Boulez's phase of letting the performer decide the order of events the work (like the Third Piano Sonata, and the first version of "Pli selon pli"). The particular freedom of "Eclat" consists in the conductor being able to decide and signal to the ensemble what section of the work to do at any given junction. Much of the film consists of Spanjaard trying to introduce the instrumentalists to this difficult concept where what comes next could be unpredictable. Boulez comes onto the scene to coach Spanjaard and the ensemble's pianist, and explains a little about the inspirations for the piece, such as Paul Klee's painting. One often hears that Boulez is a stern taskmaster, able to drive instrumentalists to tears, but here we see a gentle fellow who is full of patience. And instead of an academic more mathematician than musician, as musical conservatives all too often accuse, Boulez comes across here as a sort of musical trickster, whose piece seeks to be honestly fun and entertaining for those who perform it. The documentary ends with a complete performance of the piece. This documentary certainly got me to finally understand the beauty of the piece, which before seemed impenetrable.
The second documentary, by Helene Jarry and Andy Sommer, revolves around Boulez's "Sur Incises" for three pianos, three harps, and three percussionists (1997-1998). This is a masterpiece expansion of his "Incises" for solo piano, an exploration of the instrument's resonance and the performer's virtuosity with lots of lovely glissandi and bounding from bass to treble and back again. In expanding it, Boulez seems to have (to use one metaphor said also about his "Notations II" for orchestra) looked at the original piece with a microscope and discovered more notes, for each gesture of the piano version is lengthened and bounced around the instrumentalists, displaying a new richness of colour in the process.
The documentary, filmed at the Cite de la Musique, consists of Boulez's explanation of the piece before a full performance of it by the Ensemble Intercontemporain. The entire idea of a lecture on the piece was Jarry's, and she succeeded in having Boulez prepare a presentation of the utmost simplicity for an audience mainly of secondary-school children and the public. Boulez's talk assumes no knowledge of music theory, but Boulez speaks instead about general structural matters, such as repeated motifs (one he calls a musical "slap"), and his appreciation for exotic timbres, especially the Carribean steel drums used in the second movement. The soloists on the full performance that follows are the same as on Deutsche Grammophon's 2000 recording. All in all, though, I think that the performance on CD is slightly better, and certainly the CD has better sound, its recording having been done at IRCAM whose staff are experts with this sort of thing.The DVD's sound is rather lacking, and on a media that could have had true surround sound we only get Dolby Digital 2.0, i.e. plain stereo. Still the DVD is still valuable in appreciating certain facets of the work, and it's simply an awesome experience to see virtuosi musicians tacking this extremely demanding score. Hideki Nagano and Dmitri Vassilakis, especially, are godlike in their nonchalant handling of the piano parts, and only on the DVD can one fully appreciate the many difficulties that confront the percussionists.
This is a must-have fan any fan of Boulez, and it just might win over those modern-classical fans who don't just get the infamous Frenchman and his music yet.
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