Pierre Boulez & Cleveland Orchestra Release Deutsche Grammophon Recordings, 10/5

Deutsche Grammophon is proud to release two all-new recordings featuring revered conductor Pierre Boulez (who recently celebrated his 85th birthday and has recorded on DG for 40 years) and the equally acclaimed Cleveland Orchestra in collaboration. In two different programs devoted to Ravel and Mahler respectively, Boulez and the Orchestra reveal their long-standing affinity and complementary styles. The Cleveland Orchestra was the first American orchestra Boulez conducted, and today he is "...still immensely fond of this orchestra because it continues to come very close to my own idea of the way in which a score should be realized in terms of the music and its sonorities." Both recordings will be available October 5, 2010.

The first recording focuses exclusively on Ravel and is a showcase for the soloist Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Aimard and Boulez have long worked together beginning when Aimard was invited by Boulez to be a founding member of the conductor's Ensemble InterContemporain. Additionally, Aimard, Boulez and The Cleveland Orchestra have recorded together for DG before with the 1997 release of Messiaen's Le Réveil des oiseaux. For the present album they have recorded Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand for Piano and Orchestra in D major and Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in G major. Both were captured during live performances over the period of one "religious week" in Cleveland according to Aimard. Both the composer and the conductor represent the "Everest" of modern music for Aimard and in his own words it was "a dream come true" to work on Ravel with Boulez. Click here for more information

The album is completed with Aimard's solo performance of Ravel's Miroirs, a five movement work for solo piano composed 1904-05. Aimard sees Ravel as "a composer who wrote in the wake of Impressionism and who arguably reacted against it. In ‘Une barque sur l'océan' from Miroirs we find a very tempestuous, later kind of Impressionism. The kind of intangible textures that occur in ‘Noctuelles' are very modern. ‘Oiseaux tristes' is an extremely original piece with some highly associative harmonies and realistic imitation birdsong that has been acoustically transformed. ‘Alborada' is like a dry-point etching, and ‘La vallée des cloches' is a single endless melody that is ultimately dissipated in an acoustic bell effect. And so we have five clearly defined Miroirs."

Both conductor and pianist bring unique and fresh perspectives to these major works by Ravel, a composer who still exudes a sense of mystery and invites us to revisit our listening habits. Aimard will perform Miroirs on his US recitals this December.

For their second recording, Boulez and The Cleveland Orchestra turn their attention to Mahler with a new recording of Des Knaben Wunderhorn and the Adagio from the Tenth Symphony. With this album Boulez will complete his Mahler cycle for Deutsche Grammophon which began in 1995 with the Symphony no. 6. Magdalena Kožená and Christian Gerhaher are the soloists in Des Knaben Wunderhorn.

Not only does this recording mark the completion of Boulez's Mahler-cycle on DG, but it continues DG's 85th birthday celebration for Boulez and the 150th anniversary of Mahler's birth. While not necessarily saving the best for last, the Adagio from the Tenth Symphony is the most fitting repertoire to celebrate the numerous important dates and anniversaries since Boulez feels that it is "a summation of all Mahler had ever written." The work seems to point in the direction of early-Schoenberg, but remains inconclusive as to what music Mahler would have written should he had lived longer.

The song-cycle Des Knaben Wunderhorn works on a much smaller scale than the Adagio. The form harkens back to something typical of the early Romantics but the musical and harmonic language is much more progressive and forward-thinking, thus creating the duality which is central to much of Mahler's work. Boulez and The Cleveland Orchestra could not have been joined by more accomplished vocalists. According to The Plain Dealer, "the undoubted star of the Wunderhorn songs was Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená, whose plush voice and dramatic flair handily captured the essences of scenes steeped in the miseries of war, poverty, and ephemeral love." Recorded live just as the Ravel-album was, these recordings capture one of music's great collaborations still giving riveting performances 40 years later.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard in Performance:

12/1/2010 - Los Angeles (Walt Disney Concert Hall); Recital*

12/3/2010 - Philadelphia (Kimmel Center); Recital*

12/5/2010 - Chicago (Symphony Center); Recital*

12/8/2010 - New York (Carnegie Hall); Recital*

2/5/2011 - New York (Carnegie Hall); Schumann Concerto w/ The Cleveland Orchestra

2/6/2011 - Newark (NJPAC); Schumann Concerto w/ The Cleveland Orchestra

3/10/15/2011 - New York (Avery Fisher Hall); Ligeti Piano Concerto w/ The New York Philharmonic

5/3/2011 - Princeton, NJ (McCarter); Recital

5/5/2011 - Washington DC; Recital

5/7/2011 - Morrow, GA (Spivey Hall); Recital

* Includes Miroirs

Magdalena Kožená in Performance:

12/17/2010-1/1/2011 - New York (Metropolitan Opera); Pelléas et Mélisande

5/3-6/2011 - Los Angeles (Walt Disney Concert Hall); Mahler's Rückert-Lieder w/ The Los Angeles Philharmonic

Pierre Boulez in Performance:

11/26-12/4/2010 - Chicago; w/ The Chicago Symphony Orchestra