Carnegie Hall Celebrates Pierre Boulez’s Centenary Year With Three Concerts This Winter

This winter, Carnegie Hall will present three concerts paying tribute to the late visionary conductor and composer Pierre Boulez (1925–2016) in his centenary year.

The Hall’s centenary celebration kicks off with a performance by new music collective International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) on Thursday, January 30 at 7:30 p.m. This cutting-edge concert, titled “Boulez Rebooted,” highlights the composer’s revolutionary creative work at the intersection of technology and performance. Boulez’s approach to composition was an inspiration for Zankel Hall’s design, including flexibility that enables artists to perform in different configurations. The program, presented in Zankel Hall Center Stage, includes the world premiere of Pliages, hommage à Pierre Boulez, composed and performed collaboratively with ICE and the artificial intelligence software Somax2, developed by researchers at IRCAM, Boulez’s world-renowned institute for computer and electro-acoustic music and innovation. The program also includes Boulez’s Anthèmes 2 and works by leading composers inspired by his legacy, including longtime IRCAM researcher Philippe Manoury; 2024 Pulitzer Prize winning American composer Tyshawn Sorey; and the late Kaija Saariaho, whose composition Sombre will be performed with renowned baritone Will Liverman.

Ensemble Connect continues the celebration on Monday, February 10 at 7:30 p.m. with a program in Weill Recital Hall featuring Luciano Berio’s Ricorrenze for Wind Quintet—written for his friend, Boulez—alongside works by Beethoven and Schubert. The performance also features the New York premieres of musica spolia (arr. for chamber ensemble) and musica nuvola by Katherine Balch (both commissioned by Carnegie Hall).

On Sunday, March 2 at 2:00 p.m., in Weill Recital Hall, renowned pianist and founding member of Boulez’s Ensemble intercontemporain Pierre-Laurent Aimard performs an intimate recital featuring multiple works by Boulez alongside carefully selected pieces by Bartók, Ravel, and Schoenberg. The program aims to give audience members new insight into the distinctive genius of his late teacher and collaborator. “He [Boulez] likes to put interpreters at the border of what’s possible and what is not,” said Mr. Aimard. “If you like that, it’s incredibly exciting.”

About Pierre Boulez

The French composer, conductor, and writer Pierre Boulez was one of the crucially important figures of the 20th-century musical avant-garde. In 1954, with the support of Jean-Louis Barrault, he founded the Domaine musical in Paris—one of the first concert series dedicated entirely to the performance of modern music–and remained its director until 1967. Boulez began his conducting career in 1958 with the Südwestfunk Orchestra in Baden-Baden, Germany. From 1960 to 1962, he taught composition at the Music Academy in Basel. In 1977, he founded the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris, which became the world's best-known center for computer music. Both Philippe Manoury and the late Kaija Saariaho, two of the world’s most influential and widely performed composers, worked extensively with IRCAM’s model of collaboration between composers, scientists, performers, and engineers, one that still resonates strongly today as part of Boulez’s ongoing legacy.

Pierre Boulez had a close relationship to Carnegie Hall. He was holder of the Hall’s Richard and Barbara Debs Composer Chair from 1999 to 2003 and was elected as an Honorary Trustee of the Hall in 1995. Boulez’s works have been performed in nearly 90 concerts at Carnegie Hall dating back to 1950. As a conductor, he led orchestras in more than 40 performances with programs largely focused on Mahler, his own music and works by his contemporaries, as well masterworks of the 20th century, collaborating with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Berlin, Vienna Philharmonic, and more. A key advisor in the development of Zankel Hall, he performed with Ensemble intercontemporain during the Zankel Hall Opening Festival in 2003.