Pierre Boulez, one of the most important artists of the 20th century, died on Tuesday evening in Baden-Baden. The composer, conductor and music theorist intensely focused on the work of Leoš Janáček at the end of his career.
During his lifetime, Pierre Boulez received 26 Grammy Awards and a number of distinctions and other official honours. These include an honorary doctorate from the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts for lifetime achievement and excellent interpretation and promotion of the work of Leoš Janáček. He received it in Brno in 2010. A year earlier, he was awarded the Commemorative Medal of the Leoš Janáček Foundation. Throughout his life, Boulez focused on performing the music of his contemporaries at the highest level both with large orchestras that he "brought to the 20th century as well as with his Ensemble intercontemporain. Whenever he stood behind the music of the past, it always represented a confirmation of uncompromising quality.
Obituary: Pierre Boulez Was the Prophet of Music of the 20th Century➚
And that is another reason why his interest in Janáček is pleasing, although it came towards the end of Boulezov's career. He concluded his career with an opera conducted in the form of a great production of From the House of the Dead. This excellent performance premiered in the Theater an der Wien in 2007. The performance then travelled the world, it was seen by the audience in the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, at the Aix-en-Provence Festival and in the Metropolitan Opera. The opera was directed by Patrice Chéreau, with whom Boulez worked over a long period and together they created the legendary production of Der Ring des Nibelungen in Bayreuth in 1976. The performance is recorded on a DVD➚, and a number of Czech and Slovak singers contributed to the production (Jiří Sulženko, Štefan Margita, Peter Straka, Vladimír Chmelo…). We would like to point out at least the finale of the beautiful and chilling production.
Pierre Boulez was born on 26 May 1925 in Montbrison, France. Initially, he studied mathematics but he transferred to the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied under Olivier Messiaen. René Leibowitz also had an important influence on him. In terms of composers of the past, he referred mainly to Anton Webern. He composed using the method of integral Serialism, and he also focused on electronic and aleatoric music. At the request of French President Georges Pompidou, he founded Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique – IRCAM in Paris in 1970. He was the chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic in 1971-1977, and regularly collaborated with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, the London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Staatskapelle Berlin.
