Track Listing

1. Ameriques
2. Arcana
3. Deserts
4. Ionisation

Product Details

• Released on: 2001-06-19
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

From Amazon.com
Pierre Boulez's Sony recordings of Varèse's music long ruled the roost until Riccardo Chailly's complete set with the Concertgebouw for Decca. This Chicago remake, for all its precise orchestral playing, doesn't challenge either of them. Both the Sony Boulez and Decca Chailly have a sense of enthusiasm and a feeling for the wildness with which these avant-garde works burst upon the scene in the 1920s. Amériques, for example, should knock your socks off, with its sirens piercing through the orchestral textures, but they're relatively tame on this expansive reading, in which Boulez seems to lavish more affection on the quiet opening section. Déserts is also more measured than it should be, the resulting precision bought at the cost of intensity. Virtually anything Boulez conducts is worth hearing, and this disc certainly reveals much about the scores, but hopes that this master of modern music would top his earlier recording aren't fulfilled. --Dan Davis

Amazon.fr
Qui mieux que Pierre Boulez peut avec une telle acuité passer l'œuvre orchestrale de Varèse au peigne fin ? Rien ne lui échappe : il fouille chaque ligne, chaque trait, jusqu'à ce que se dégage une logique interne qui lui sied. D'une certaine manière, le chef français dépèce les partitions, à force d'une analyse frénétique qui frise la dissection chirurgicale. Mais quelle aération du tissu ! Quel émerveillement devant tant d'allègement, qui redonne à ces œuvres, pourtant réputées complexes, une simplicité quasi virginale. Difficile d'imaginer interprétation plus idiomatique que celle-ci. Un sommet. --Pierre Guillaume