Boulez: 100th Anniversary - Idil Biret - Vinyl LP Record (Arrives in 50 days)

With Pierre Boulez's 2nd Piano Sonata, Idil Biret not only makes her American recording debut but also presents the first U.S. recording of this important contemporary work. Composed in 1948, this sonata occupies a position that exerted a causative influence upon Boulez's subsequent music. Its experimental and ground-breaking nature may be better understood if one regards it as having grown out of a response to Webern's Variations (1936), the companion piece on this album. The rigid, geometric patterns of Webern's work, the classical purity of its encompassing organization, seem to have served as a base of departure for Boulez's broadened structures that are equally rigid but incomparably more complex. It is this very complexity that conceals the strict framework of the entire composition and projects it as the product of an ardent improvisatory impetus. It demands from its interpreter a similar approach, along with technical prowess and intellectual control of the highest order. It was only a matter of course that this work, together with influences emanating from other sources (chiefly John Cage), should lead the path not only to open-form and aleatory compositions, including Boulez's own 3rd Piano Sonata, but also, through its new pianistic language, urge the development of a whole new generation of virtuoso pianists… (Ilhan Mimaroglu, 1973)

Label: Idil Biret Archives | Origin: Holland