Contemporary music icon Pierre Boulez opens 2009 Helsinki Festival

Boulez and Susanna Mälkki conduct the Ensemble InterContemporain on Thursday and Friday

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By Vesa Sirén in Paris
     
      Genders and generations meet when Pierre Boulez and Susanna Mälkki step up for a joint photo session.
      The 84-year-old composer-conductor and contemporary music icon Boulez founded the Ensemble InterContemporain - the world's most highly-regarded contemporary music ensemble - in 1976, and the EIC's current music director is the Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki. She was appointed in 2006 after making her début with the group in August 2004.
     
The two met in Paris last week at IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), the contemporary music mecca established by Boulez on the Place Igor Stravinsky in the 1970s, at the behest of then French President Georges Pompidou.
      The encounter took place in the building's inner sanctum, Boulez's own office, but the next time they are together will be on home soil for Mälkki, at the opening concert of this year's Helsinki Festival.
      Boulez and Mälkki will share conducting duties in two EIC concerts, in Temppeliaukio Church (13.8.) and Finlandia Hall (14.8.).
      Boulez will conduct his own compositions, and Mälkki all the other works.
     
Pierre Boulez is a god-like figure in music, with a cruel streak at times, but he approves of Susanna Mälkki.
      "Our committee interviewed five candidates for the job. The most convincing answers came back from Susanna Mälkki", he declares.
      Mälkki has herself described the interview occasion as a rather "pompous" event. "I was candid and honest", she recalls.
      "Extremely so", replies Boulez.
     
The Ensemble InterContemporain is a French chamber orchestra consisting of thirty or so musicians, devoted entirely to the performance of contemporary music.
      "It is the largest ensemble given over entirely to contemporary compositions", enthuses Boulez.
      "The French Ministry of Culture asked me to set up the EIC in 1975, and I agreed provided that certain conditions were met. Each and every soloist in the ensemble is on a monthly salary and all are treated equally."
      The ensemble is known as a gifted interpreter of the works of the 20th century modernist classics and compositions by masters of the same generation as Boulez himself.
      "There are also some composers in the 40 to 50 years age grouping who have already shown their abilities, and we look for new talents through our own screening panel", says Boulez.
     
Boulez does not himself take part in the reading of scores from hopeful composers. He leaves the responsibility of this to his music director.
      "Earlier the MD David Robertson (who held the post from 1992-2000) conducted a lot of minimalist works, which do not greatly interest me. But he had the right to perform them and the audience has the right to be informed. That is their problem, not mine."
     
Mälkki's choices for the two concerts at the Helsinki Festival get Boulez's nod of approval as being representative. Boulez is the oldest composer on show.
      Luca Francesconi is a 53-year-old Italian professor, while Bruno Mantovani and Yann Robin are younger prospects for the future.
     
Boulez is proud of the quality of the EIC.
      "France does not have any large orchestras that can compete on the same plane as those of Vienna, Amsterdam, or Berlin, even though we might have the material for it. But the Ensemble InterContemporain is of a high international standard, which is what I wanted in the first place."
      The ensemble tends to play the works on its programme many times over, honing the performance.
      "They have played my compositions at dozens of concerts. Each and every musician has the relevant parts at his or her fingertips already at the beginning of the rehearsal phase."
     
Perhaps the most eagerly awaited of Boulez's works to be heard in Helsinki is ...explosante - fixe... for MIDI-flute and ensemble.
      "We developed the electronic technology for it at IRCAM", he recalls.
      "The flute expands through a prism created by the technology."
      Boulez will also conduct his Dérive II for eleven instruments.
      "I am trying to find a long composition form in which the themes and motifs are developed extremely powerfully. I'm looking in a way to provide a counter to the brevity that is pervasive in modern art. Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring is a continuum of short snatches and episodes. Even as recently as Gustav Mahler, things were done differently."
     
In Boulez's view, constructing a long form in the language of modern music is a difficult exercise.
      "The long form develops through a constant variation of the musical vocabulary [...] if the variation is too much and the result becomes too complex, then you cannot recognise the relationships that go to make it all up, and the form as such disintegrates. The listener does not get interested in what is going on if it is not possible to follow anything", observes Boulez.
      "Then again, if the result is too abundantly obvious, it lacks any interest, because everything can be predicted in advance."
     
You mean to say the audience really matters?
      "Of course it does!" he retorts with some vigour.
      "I wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of having the work performed if I did not have a wish to convince people", says Boulez.
      Yes, but... isn't the music of Pierre Boulez still going to be too difficult for the wider audience to get its head around?
      "Music is not written so that it will please people, but so that it will convince them", he offers by way of a reminder.
      "If you compose to please, you will not please for very long. If you compose to convince, then one of these days you may succeed in that endeavour."
     
Pierre Boulez has stressed that it is important to keep moving forward. He applauds the work of younger compoisers such as Harrison Birtwistle and Bruno Mantovani, but he also conducts the works of a good many now-deceased composers such as Richard Wagner and Gustav Mahler.
      "Well, I have conducted works by young composers, too", he says somewhat defensively, and lists first performances of compositions by Gérard Grisay, Tristan Murail, and Philippe Manoury that admittedly took place a good while ago.
     
Boulez's favourite composers share a common complexity in their work.
      He once told me that he felt "pity and patience" towards those composers who were still dabbling in major-minor tonality.
      On the other hand, he admits to envying popular music, which "lives from day to day".
      "In the 1960s, for a brief while the most interesting modern music was coming out of the experimental jazz fold, with groups like the Modern Jazz Quartet. There again, popular music is also riddled with clichés."
      Boulez has also praised popular music for the way in which it has taken instruments - the electric guitar being a good example - and developed them in its own way. He himself used electric guitar in his works, and has conducted the compositions of Frank Zappa, known to many as a rock artist and guitar virtuoso, when Zappa wrote avant-garde compositions for the classical audience.
      "I liked the fact that Zappa tried to shrug off the commercial side of his world. He died too young [Zappa passed on in 1993 at the age of 52] to reach his objectives."
     
At parties and raves, the music of Boulez has occasionally been slipped in and taken as experimental dance music.
      Finnish composer and multi-instrumentalist Jimi Tenor and American electronic and experimental hip hop musician Paul Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky have both remixed Boulez for their own ends.
      "I'm not saying I don't care, but I have never rigorously protected my compositions", Boulez says. And how did DJ Spooky succeed when he was working with your music?
      "I would urge him towards a great degree of innovation."
     
Pierre Boulez's calendar is full with conducting engagements with major orchestras through to the spring of 2010.
      At that point he plans to take a sabbatical year away from the platform.
      "I'm going to compose a new version of my Notations, and then there is Anthèmes III and a project for woodwinds."
      And what about teaching?
      "Only in Lucerne from now on, and only on masterclass courses", he says.
      "I found that when I taught more, then analysing things became an obsession", he says with a shudder.
      "I became like an X-ray machine when I saw a new score. I would just see the bones, and not the flesh around them. And music requires meat on the bones."
      He expresses shock and awe at the path taken by his own teacher, Olivier Messiaen.
      "He taught for 35 years. I think I'd rather kill myself than that!"
     
Boulez does not miss his pupils.
      "No, I do not have the sort of fatherly soul in me. I have been independent and I have not wanted disciples about my feet. It is important to send children out into the world quickly!"
     
In terms of her career, Susanna Mälkki is somewhat in the same position as Boulez was as a conductor 40 years ago: the biggest and best orchestras are beginning to show an interest in her.
      "If you are offered responsibility, you really should take it, if you feel you are ready", advises Boulez.
      He recalls how he received an invitation from Wieland Wagner to conduct Parsifal at the 1966 Bayreuth Festival.
      "I'd been spending my summers in Darmstadt on contemporary music courses, and this was a completely different world for me. I took a risk, and I have not regretted it."
      He also remembers how the New York Philharmonic asked him to become Music Director as the successor to Leonard Bernstein, after only three weeks of working together with the orchestra.
      "That was a tough call. Bernstein was an idol, but I took all the risks, and some of them even came off."
     
Susanna Mälkki is to continue as Music Director of the Ensemble InterContemporain at least until 2012.
      And what if she receives an offer from some large topflight orchestra?
      "I shall say farewell, good luck, and all the best to you, since a larger orchestra makes it possible to perform a broader repertoire of music! And if that happens, you'll always be welcome back as a guest conductor. Go ahead, take all the risks if they come", says Boulez by way of encouragment to his younger colleague.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 8.8.2009
     
     
Ensemble InterContemporain, cond. Pierre Boulez and Susanna Mälkki, 13.8. and 14.8.
      13.8. in Temppeliaukio Church, 19:30. Mantovani, Boulez.
      14.8. in Finlandia Hall, with soloist soprano Barbara Hannigan. Robin, Francesconi, Boulez


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Wilco and Salonen dates sold out at Helsinki Festival (10.8.2009)

Links:
  Helsinki Festival 2009
  Pierre Boulez (Wikipedia)
  Ensemble InterContemporain website
  Susanna Mälkki (Wikipedia)

VESA SIRÉN / Helsingin Sanomat
vesa.siren@hs.fi