Fanfare Reviews
from January/February 2002

VARÈSE Amériques. Arcana. Déserts. Ionisation • Pierre Boulez, cond; Chicago SO • DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 289471137-2 (68:22)

It's not surprising that Boulez should return to these works after nearly two decades. Boulez has lately revisited many of the composers he has championed through the years, including Webern and Stravinsky most notably. Deutsche Grammophon seems more than willing to accommodate his new thoughts on this music. In the case of Varèse, Boulez recorded the major works for CBS/Sony in the Early 1980s. He cites some specific reasons for wanting to record Varèse again, including musicians' increased familiarity with Varèse's sound world, improvements in recording technology, and Boulez's longtime association with the Chicago Symphony. "The Chicago Symphony is a very robust orchestra and . . . I was particularly sure that the brass of the orchestra could respond." Also, Boulez was able to perform these pieces in the CSO's regular concerts, leading to greater understanding and finesse for the recorded performances.

Boulez's earlier recordings remain in the catalog as Sony CD remasters. Ionisation, Amériques, and Arcana are all on SMK45844, with Density 21.5, Offrandes, Octandre, and Intégrales. Déserts is on SMK68344, with Ecuatorial, Hyperprism, and Elliott Carter's Symphony of Three Orchestras (!). The smaller works are with Ensemble Intercontemporain, the larger, including Ionisation, with the New York Philharmonic.

Boulez's approach to these pieces, like his approach to Webern and Stravinsky, has changed since he last recorded them, with a greater concern for the overarching line, the relationships among sections. Individual moments are much more refined and smoothed out, at least in part a result of improved recording quality; those Sony discs have a real edge to them. Boulez has smoothed himself out too, though, and is more willing these days to allow what he's conducting to breathe on its own. This is perhaps the most interesting difference between these new Varèse recordings and the old, as it was the most interesting development from the first batch of Webern recordings and the more recent. In both cases, Boulez was initially interested in performing the music as written, thereby setting a standard for clarity and technical "correctness" for which there was little or no recorded precedent (excepting, arguably, Robert Craft). In the later recordings, Boulez's goal is humanistic, allowing the music to express the personalities of the composers themselves. (This is something Boulez has long been willing and able to do with his own contemporaries.) The balances--for example, the unusually restrained sirens in Ionisation--reflect a more integrated conception of ensemble, parallel with Boulez's organic approach to the music's form.

Although Boulez has gradually evolved his performances of these pieces, he's kept with the same versions that he conducted earlier, which include the 17-minute version of Déserts without the tape part and the later, revised (and most often heard) version of Amériques. I don't really agree with the decision to perform Déserts without tape. Boulez felt that the state of technology at the time Déserts was written (1950-54) kept Varèse from achieving his intentions. He finds the tape part unconvincing and feels the piece "is more homogenous" without it. To me, Déserts is one of the few pieces in which Varèse was truly innovative. In his previous pieces, he seemed always mired in his awareness of Schoenberg's op. 16 and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Finally, with Déserts , the new sounds of the tape part and its use within the orchestral medium represent a watershed in the development of 20th-century music and a breakthrough in the composer's expression. Even if I were to agree with Boulez that the taped music is a failure (I don't), this would still be true. Performing the "standard" revised version of Amériques is obviously the right choice in most circumstances, unless one is making a historical point. Riccardo Chailly used a reconstruction by Chou Wen-chung of a version that was prepared from the original manuscript--an interesting but not definitive presentation. That being said, the overall effect of the piece is the same in both versions.

This brings us to Boulez's colleagues. Also in the catalog are Riccardo Chailly's performances of the ensemble music with the ASKO Ensemble and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, released as part of Decca's "complete" Varèse of 1998. Kent Nagano's recordings with the ORTF National Orchestra are split between two single volumes comprising the complete works, on Erato (midprice). Robert Craft's are long gone, though one can still find them, used, on LP. There is a new budget-priced disc on Naxos, Christopher Lyndon-Gee conducting the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, with Arcana, Déserts , Octandre, Offrandes, and Intégrales. There are others here and there in various collections, but I'll stick to the obvious (and hope not to forget anything of importance). The "robust" quality of the Chicago Symphony comes through in the recording, particularly in Déserts , which-simply put-receives a "bigger" performance. (Note that all comparison issues of Déserts include the tape part, so are by default preferable to the present version.) The CSO sounds more American, slightly aggressive, the sound of individual instrumental sections more directed and penetrating even while levels of the texture as a whole are audible. Boulez requires more "bite" from the violins, for example, than even the great strings of the Concertgebouw provide; this is obviously deliberate. The way the orchestra has been recorded, while not without depth, space, and placement, is yet more focused than for either the Concertgebouw or ORTF ensembles, in which some of the instrumental sections really do sound as though they're at the back of the stage.

More subjectively, Boulez's results differ from Nagano's in that Nagano adds to his performances a bounce, or swing, jazziness perhaps, which is an unexpected approach, although not a destructive one. Maybe he can't help it. Boulez's tempos and balances seem to change in more discrete, deliberate ways; letting the orchestra breathe a little doesn't amount to free rein. His approach gives the impression of greater control, greater power at his fingertips, waiting for the moment, than does Chailly's or Nagano's. Compared with both the ORTF and the Concertgebouw, the CSO's peaks are greater but the whole is more measured. The Polish RSO's Arcana and Déserts , generally exciting, pithy performances, both sound like smaller ensembles, more lithe but less solid.

What would Varèse have wanted? I doubt he'd ever have imagined so many near-perfect performances of his work, I doubt he could even have conceived of such perfection. Is it reasonable or right to polish out the roughness of his musical experiments, or was that roughness inherent to their artistic expression? If the latter is true, the earlier recordings of Craft and Boulez (with their brittle sound adding to the edginess) are the way to go. Among current conductors, Boulez has the mile-long Varèse pedigree and his own pioneering composer's sense of what his elder was striving for. The way he has presented Varèse's music in the present recording is absolutely valid, even excitingly
so--these are the finest recordings available--but is Boulez the conductor being too careful here? The conclusion I reach is that there is no definitive recording of any selection of Varèse's work, and it may be that none is possible, but Boulez is a great conductor whose evolving interpretation of his core repertoire is a fascinating journey.

Robert Kirzinger

* * *

Almost 20 years separate these recordings of music by Varèse and those made by Pierre Boulez in his last year as music director of the New York Philharmonic (available on two Sony CDs: the first three works on one, Déserts on the other). His earlier discs have held a notable place on the short shelf of recordings of music by this composer; this new one is every bit their equal, and perhaps more.

In the two works for large orchestra, the readings have gained about a minute each in duration; but more importantly, they have also gained in expressivity and sharper contrasts. In Amériques, the eerie episode for strings and percussion (7:56-8:45) displays such a contrast: The strings are just slightly subdued, the percussion just a bit more prominent, providing a sense of anticipation for the next violent episode. In addition, there is more "spring" in the section, so reminiscent of Le Sacre, which immediately precedes the series of orchestral yawps that comprise the finale.
The sound is vivid, with more impact than the Sony, which itself is more than adequate. As good as the Sony performance is, I like this one better: It makes a stronger case for the piece by emphasizing the contrasting characteristics of the various episodes, and it projects a stronger sense of rhythmic freedom. The "original version" recorded by Chailly, though providing a fascinating look at the blueprints, isn't as concise and powerful a work.

The first two minutes of Arcana are more portentous than previously; Chailly's has lighter textures and less bass impact (no doubt attributable to the engineers rather than the conductor), and Slatkin is almost manic by comparison. Boulez presents an interpretation that is imposing and monolithic, yet the silences that punctuate the final few minutes make almost as much of an impression. The differences between this performance and that on Sony are less notable than with Amériques, though the sonic improvements may be enough to tip the balance toward DG (they are for me).
I don't think I've ever heard a bad recording of Ionisation, since it tends to create its own atmosphere without as much reliance on matters of stylistic interpretation as the orchestral pieces. Boulez's new recording is, if anything, understated in comparison to his earlier one, but it has a more interesting personality, with a distinct air of mystery. Chailly's, though expertly performed and recorded, sounds like interesting, random patterns that exist in isolation.

Boulez often used to supply his own program notes, and that would have been helpful here: I would be interested to know why his performance of Déserts omits the interpolations of "organized sound"--the electronic tapes that were the radical new component of this piece, one of the works that Varèse completed after a prolonged compositional silence. Those interruptions are startling and disturbing, and there's no question that the work flows more easily and coherently without them. However, Varèse spent over a decade searching for new sounds and techniques, and Déserts was the first fruit of that study. It seems incomplete without the interpolations.

Despite my disappointment with Déserts, the strength of this program, both in performance and in sound, should not be minimized. I can happily recommend this CD as an exceptional collection of these seminal compositions.

Christopher Abbot

VARÈSE Arcana. Octandre. Offrandes.¹ Intégrales. Déserts • Christopher Lyndon-Gee, cond; Polish Natl RSO; Maryse Castets (sop)¹ • NAXOS 8.554820 (70:46; texts and translations)

It makes little sense to compare this disc (or more specifically, the two works they share) to the Boulez, reviewed above, since the intended audiences are probably different. Purchasers of the DG will no doubt be familiar with Varèse, and probably with Boulez's earlier recordings (Sony). This Naxos disc, on the other hand, is presumably intended as an introduction to the composer. I approached it on those terms.

The earliest piece, Offrandes, receives a very sensuous performance, abetted by the lush voice of soprano Maryse Castets. The debt to Debussy is clearly established. Boulez offers a less romantic vision, and his soprano, Rachel Yakar, is less operatic. Octandre again owes much to Debussy, especially in the primacy of the wind sonorities. Boulez's Ensemble Intercontemporain is hard to beat, and the sound, despite its early digital vintage, is quite effective. This Naxos recording is more closely miked, and the performance lacks the refinement of the French ensemble. Intégrales is perhaps the quintessential Varèse work, with its characteristic wind and brass motives and large percussion section. Unfortunately, Lyndon-Gee's performance limps along clumsily, with a lamentable lack of crispness to the percussion attacks; the lion's roar is unflatteringly flatulent, and the brass sextet in the middle section sounds terribly sour.

Of the two extended works, Arcana begins frantically, which I find singularly ineffective in this piece. The brass is again incredibly sour, with exaggerated glissandos that sound merely sloppy. The performance as a whole is imbued with a sense of impatience (that some might characterize as momentum, but which to me reduces the sense of monumentality), as episodes flit by, producing little effect, though the tympani do produce an impressive noise. Boulez (Sony) with a timing of just five seconds longer, produces a more coherent, polished performance. Déserts is offered complete with electronic interpolations, though the tapes that were used have not aged well, as surface noise competes with the recorded sound montage. However, this performance is still the most effective on the disc, conveying the mystery--and mastery--of this revolutionary work.

My preference for a one-disc, midpriced introduction to Varèse remains Boulez on Sony. His is a generous (77 minutes) selection of major works, both orchestral and chamber, performed by two top ensembles. If price is an absolute priority, this Naxos disc is a passable recommendation, mostly on the strength of Déserts.

Christopher Abbot

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Fanfare Reviews from January/February 2002

Fanfare Reviews
from January/February 2002