Boulez, Manoury and Wagner exalted by Thomas Guggeis and the Orchester national de France

This evening, the Centenary Pierre Boulez opens the compass wide by programming, in addition to a piece by the honored composer, the tribute that an heir, Philippe Manoury, has just written to him, and a work by a master of the past that conductor Boulez contributed to dust off: Richard Wagner.

Composed in 2024 by Philippe Manoury, Maelström (Homage to Pierre Boulez) is a short orchestral piece of around five minutes that is both expressive, sumptuous and written in a single, powerful gesture. It is given this evening as a world premiere. A source of inspiration: Notation VIII by Pierre Boulez; a reinterpreted borrowing: the interval of a fourth evolving within the whole becoming a fifth in Manoury; a central driving idea for these two musicians: the future of the material. Hence the title of Maelstrom to account for this tumultuous swirl which accumulates tensions in a sort of organized chaos quickly contaminating the entire orchestra. There is indeed something maritime or meteorological in this piece which, while above all celebrating the power innervating Boulez’s Music, is not devoid of refinement, quite the contrary. She constantly plays on colors and mass relationships, while multiplying accidents: pizzicati summoning Music for strings, percussion and celesta by Béla Bartók, joyful fluidity of the flutes distantly recalling Holidayssecond movement of Nocturnes by Claude Debussy, chords hammered out by the brass, or even a coda interspersed with sudden silences. Thomas Guggeis and the Orchester national de France carry the audience into this maelstrom as soon as it is formed and finished.

Originally, there was Twelve Notations for piano. Several decades later, Pierre Boulez in orchestra five – I to IV and VII –, given this evening. Orchestration, certainly, but transformation, that is to say extension through the complexification of the primitive musical idea. It is indeed the multiplication of resources that interested the musician for his Notations for orchestrawhich are like studies in which the impersonal character of a luxuriant autonomous discourse with shimmering timbres dominates, driven by the irresistible force of rhythm, and whose perception is blurred by a play on the speed and brevity of the movement as well as on the layering of orchestral combinations. A certain variety is introduced by the order of performance of these five independent pieces, an order recommended by the composer, who wanted to convey differences in rhythm: I, IV, III, II. Finally, the VII. Thus we move successively from “moderate, fanciful” to “rhythmic”, “very moderate” and “very lively, strident”. The splendor of the orchestral timbre is magnificently rendered by the phalanx and its leader.

Last, but not leastAct I of The Valkyrie by Richard Wagner! Tribute, of course, to chef Pierre Boulez. But, unlike the abstract turn of the latter’s music, everything here is atmosphere, sometimes tragic, sometimes warlike, sometimes loving. Two things to remember above all: on the one hand, the extraordinary vigor and finesse of an orchestra constituting a character in its own right, a sort of omniscient narrator, whether it plays in full, as a leitmotif, or reduced with a single instrument, as is the case with the cello playing the air of Love; on the other hand, the presence of three Wagnerian singers: the soprano Johanni van Oostrum (Sieglinde), the tenor Klaus Florian Vogt (Siegmund) and the bass-baritone Falk Struckmann (Hunding), who finely express all the vocal inflections and gestures authorized by a concert version. Special mention for the star couple, twins who are unaware of their relationship, but instantly fall in love with each other… The listeners are therefore immediately immersed in this very dramatic beginning of an opera, shrouded in medieval fantasy. Filled this evening, the Grande Salle Pierre Boulez then explodes in cheers to salute the performance of the musicians.

Photographic credits: © Orchester national de France

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