Boulez: 3 Sonatas

On this CD:

1. Piano Sonata No. 1 I. Lent
Composed by Pierre Boulez
Performed by Claude Helffer

2. Piano Sonata No. 1 II. Assez large, rapide
Composed by Pierre Boulez
Performed by Claude Helffer

3. Piano Sonata No. 2 I. Extrêmement rapide
Composed by Pierre Boulez
Performed by Claude Helffer

4. Piano Sonata No. 2 II. Lent
Composed by Pierre Boulez
Performed by Claude Helffer

5. Piano Sonata No. 2 III. Modéré, presque vif
Composed by Pierre Boulez
Performed by Claude Helffer

6. Piano Sonata No. 2 IV. Vif
Composed by Pierre Boulez
Performed by Claude Helffer

7. Piano Sonata No. 3 Formant 3 - Constellation-miroir: points 1, blocs I, points 2, bloc II, points 3
Composed by Pierre Boulez
Performed by Claude Helffer

8. Piano Sonata No. 1 Formant 2 - Tropes: textes, parenthèse, glose, commentaire
Composed by Pierre Boulez
Performed by Claude Helffer

Tracks:

Prelude A L'Apres-Midi D'un Faune - Alexander Rahbari
Walzer - Peter Hill
I. Andante-Scherzo - Rebecca Hirsch
Sehr Ruhig Und Zart - Ulster Orchestra
Lebhaft Und Zart Bewegt - Ulster Orchestra
Sehr Langsam Und Ausserst Zart - Ulster Orchestra
Fliessend, Ausserst Zart - Ulster Orchestra
Sehr Fliessend - Ulster Orchestra
Forlane: Allegretto - Klara Kormendi
First Tableau: The Shrove-Tide Fair - Philharmonia Orchestra
The Mountebank - Philharmonia Orchestra
Vivo - Bournemouth Sinfonietta
III. Moderato Pesante - Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Hymn To St. Cecilia - Choir Of St. John's College, Cambridge
IV. Allegretto - Ondrej Lenard
Introduzione: Andante Non Troppo-Allegro Vivace - Alexander Rahbari

Tracks:

Romance - Czecho-Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra (Kosice)
II. Allegro - Ladislav Slovak
III. Allegro Agitato - Stephen Gunzenhauser
Main Theme From Schindler's List - Paul Bateman
The Unanswered Question - Northern Sinfonia
Second Electonic Interpolation (Conclusion) - Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra
Third Electronic Interpolation (Beginning) - Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra
I. Liturgie De Cristal - Amici Ensemble
IV. Commentaire - Idil Biret
Warming Up, Leading To Model 1, Bass - Gregory Rose
'Gott Nochmal' Sun God - Gregory Rose
'Vishnu' God Of Storms - Gregory Rose
God Of The Earth - Gregory Rose
First Interlude - Boris Berman
I. - Roger Heaton
Short Ride In A Fast Machine - Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
The Lord's Prayer - Choir Of St. John's College, Cambridge
II. Lento E Largo-Tranquillissimo - Zofia Kilanowicz
Lullaby - Philharmonia Orchestra
Vision Of The Hunt I - Philharmonia Orchestra
Voice For Solo Flute - Robert Aitken

Customer Reviews:

excellent overview of contemporaneous classic music.......2007-03-22

excellent overview of contemporaneous classic music.

Should be continued, plenty more 20th-century composers to be discovered.

For the price you can't lose.......2007-02-21

This 2 cd set consists of, as the title indicates, various 20c pieces or movements from the Naxos catalog. Sound quality is uniformly high, although for some such as Stockhausen's it's not clear if that's good or bad. What is excellent is the variety of the collection--some familiar (Debussy), others not, some pretty, others intentionally weird. Few will find every piece to his or her taste, but many listeners who do not spend much time on 20c music will find something to like. Overall, a great introduction to a period of much off-putting, yes, but also much compelling music.

Average customer rating:

A satisfactory performance of somewhat lesser Boulez
Easily the best of all the different recordings
First is pinnicle,less the Second,least the Third
Wonderful recording of Boulez's Second Sonata

Boulez: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-3

Manufacturer: Naxos
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Similar Items:

Berg/Schoenberg/Webern: Piano Music
Pierre Boulez: Répons / Dialogue de l'Ombre Double (20/21 series)
Boulez: The Three Piano Sonatas
Boulez conducts Boulez
György Ligeti Edition 3: Works for Piano (Etudes, Musica Ricercata) - Pierre-Laurent Aimard

ASIN: B00000147K
Release Date: 1995-09-19

Tracks:

Premiere Sonate: Lent - Beaucoup plus allant
Premiere Sonate: Assez large - Rapide
Deuxieme Sonate: Extremement rapide - Encore plus vif
Deuxieme Sonate: Lent
Deuxieme Sonate: Modere. preque vif
Deuxieme Sonate: Vif - Tres modere...Tres librement
Troisieme Sonate: Glose
Troisieme Sonate: Texte
Troisieme Sonate: Parenthese
Troisieme Sonate: Commentaire
Troisieme Sonate: Constellation - Miroire

Customer Reviews:

A satisfactory performance of somewhat lesser Boulez.......2006-08-03

Pierre Boulez's three piano sonatas are early works indeed. The first two were written in his early 20s, while the third came not long after. On this budget-priced Naxos disc Idil Biret performs. I was a bit nervous about the recording, since Biret's performance of the Ligeti etudes (also on Naxos) was a total disaster, but this recording is relatively satisfactory and may be a good addition to the Boulez fan's collection.

Even for those familiar with much serial music, even if you've heard everything else Boulez composed, the piano sonatas can be difficult listening. In fact, in the beginning one might think it merely a series of bleeps and bloops without order. Gaining insight into these takes time, and in the beginning one should focus on the simple succession of individual gestures even if the musical development on a large scale can't be perceived. Over time, however, the sonatas unlock their secrets, and one begins to notice motifs and clever form.

The first two sonatas are not Boulez's first pieces--they were preceded by the recently rehabilitated "Notations" for piano (1945)--but they are Boulez's first individual achievement. In the "Piano Sonata No. 1" (1946) the sonorities of Webern (especially the "Symphonie" op. 21), coexist with an interest in dynamic and attack which is pure Boulez. The first movement is developed out of merely four opening gestures: a rising minor sixth, an appoggiatura, an isolated note, and a brusqe arpeggio. The second movement opens with cells all over the keyboard, and the dashing between octaves hints at Boulez's later solo piano work "Incises".

For much of his career has sought to take serialism beyond mere miniatures, like Webern, to grand designs. The four-movement "Piano Sonata No. 2" (1948) is, at nearly a half an hour long, an important venture in this direction. Popular opinions about Boulez as entirely detached from tradition will be amazed at the work's clear debt to Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" and "Waldstein" sonatas, and it even uses a B-A-C-H motif throughout. Its first movement is marked "extremement vif"--right off we find a violence and virtuosity never before heard in Boulez--and it posseses the elegant dramatic arc of classical sonata form, exposition--development--recapitulation. The second, slow movement is lyrical and melodic, while the brief (three-minute) third minute combines variation and scherzo form. The fourth movement, however, is extremely rich, made up of an introduction, a fugue, a rondo, and a coda. A twelve-tone fugue makes for exciting listening.

The "Piano Sonata No. 3" (1955-57) was written during Boulez's interest in quasi-aleatoric writing where the performer was free to decide the order of the piece's sections. Inspired by Mallarme and the possibility of a book in perpetual expansion, this quality can be found also in Boulez's "Eclat" and "Pli selon pli", though Boulez ultimately fixed the ordering of the latter. This sonata has remained uncompleted for almost fifty years, and of the five "formants" (not "movements", since they don't move forward) which are to make up the piece, only the second and third have been published. The Third Sonata is by far the most abstract of the three, and understanding its structure involves close listening, ideally with score at hand. While based on an interesting concept, it offers fewer possibilities for mere entertainment than the first two.

So far I've only heard the recordings with Biret and with Jumppanen (on a 2005 Deutsche Grammophon disc). Biret has a light touch that makes for good listening. However, she flubs a few parts of the second sonata in a way that can't be missed; the ending of the first movement, especially, bears little relation to the score. For a reliable performance, Jumppanen's is worth getting, and carries Boulez's approval, even if his heavier use of petal won't be to everyone's taste.

The liner notes here are fairly superficial. For best understanding the sonatas I'd recommend getting a copy of Dominique Jameux's PIERRE BOULEZ (English translation Harvard University Press, 1991 ISBN 0-674-66740-9).

For me, Boulez really hit his stride after "Eclat", when he produced a number of works full of brilliant colour and elegant construction such as "Sur Incises", "...explosante-fixe..." and "Repons". I'd recommend those first to anyone curious about Boulez's music. Still, the piano sonatas are an interesting step in Boulez's musical development, as well as some of the most rigorous and adventurous serial writing of the generation after the Second Viennese School.

Easily the best of all the different recordings.......2005-04-06

Idel Biret's incredible rendition of the three Boulez Piano sonatas reigns untrammelled by the glossy facade of the Deutsche grammaphon and Montaigne efforts.
There is a sense of will, Biret guides the listener inexorably through the music with consumate artistry, giving the right amount of tension and repose to every corner of Boulez's music.
Biret brings out the ravelian nature of the second sonata better than anyone else. wonderful

First is pinnicle,less the Second,least the Third.......2000-08-15

This is a hard call;Pollini's monochrome timbre(in the Second Sonata)intentionally creates the rhythmic (furious) untrampled drive the work needs which is exciting,you don't need a listening agenda to consume this violence.Pollini would rather have some purest conception at work(as here in his early Eighties reading) sacrificing all, than drifting aimlessly over the generous violence the Second imparts.The Second Sonata, for the most part moves at such a fever pitch that many times you are not appraising the gradations of timbres(as Biret strives for),but simply the motions and movements of registers which occur in rapid-fire quicksilver formations over the entire keyboard. That's why Biret's First Sonata reading is far superior than anyone I've heard,save Fredric Rzewski,Biret knows how to construct drama and the First still had remainders and leftovers of that for the young Boulez was trying to get,subvert tradition out of his creativity.The First Sonata still has its registral movements in fairly obvious successions,and Biret shapes those outlines admirably. Her Second(I agree) lacked demonic spirit which you find in Pollini.Boulez(at the time of the Second) was reading Antonin Artaud and the Theatre of Cruelty mixed with the surreal poetry of post-war occupied France,somewhat disturbing ambiences for a man in his Twenties.It's incredible that the young Boulez had only a clangorous upright piano to try out his revolutionary new work, this one.

The Third Sonata is rather opaque and ill-focused, and I've never heard anyone yet who plays it with any degree of conviction,Aimard,Rosen.And Biret here as well strives for summoning a mystery out of this indeterminate mapping of the beautiful multi-coloured score.

As a footnote: I still admire Yvonne Loriod playing the Second,she brings an enraged demeanor to the entire work short changing the mystery that may be the result in the rather surreal second and third movements.I heard Rzewski play the Second at Carnegie Hall and in Chicago in the early Seventies,and he stays fairly close to the inflammatory enragement of Loriod.

Wonderful recording of Boulez's Second Sonata.......2000-02-03

A lot of people like Pollini's recording of Boulez's Second Sonata. I think it's very good. But it was Idil Biret's recording that made me fall in love with the piece. Biret shapes the lines more vividly, and her dyanmic range is astounding. Such things really do count while playing such a piece! Pollini is rather monochrome in comparison. In fact, I dare say Biret's performance of the Second Sonata is the sort of thing one might use to convince people of the intensity and beauty of Boulez's music.

Tracks:

Lent
Assez Large
Extremement Rapide
Lent
Modere, Presque Vif
Tres Librement, avec De Brusques Oppositions De Mouvement Et De Nuances
Parethese. Nettement Au - Dessous De Lent - Attacca
Glose. Lent - Attacca
Commentaire. Nettement Moins Lent - Attacca
Texte. Presque Lent
Melange Points Et Blocs. Modere/Vif
Points 3. Suspendu
Blocs II. Lent
Points 2. Suspendu
Blocs I. Vif
Points 1. Suspendu

Amazon.com

Boulez the composer isn't for everyone, his music's appeal often confined to avant-garde enthusiasts and to those nostalgic for the days when serialism was the dominant style. But many of his works are accessible to the open-minded willing to meet him on his own ground, which is to say that melody, tonal allure and easily understandable structure are not part of a musical vocabulary that seeks to create new forms while detonating old ones. The first two piano sonatas were written when Boulez was a musical revolutionary in his early twenties; yet the results are polished and stimulating. Jumppanen, a young Finn handpicked by Boulez to record this disc, is completely idiomatic, with the technique to do justice to these works. Pollini may reign unchallenged in the Sonata No. 2 and Idel Biret's fine recording of all three works on Naxos is budget priced, tempting novices to give them a hearing. But having all three sonatas easily available in such fine performances makes this disc a must for Boulez's admirers. --Dan Davis

Customer Reviews:

Not Boulez at his recent greatest, but technically inventive and a bold step in his musical evolution.......2006-08-03

Pierre Boulez's three piano sonatas are early works indeed. The first two were written in his early 20s, while the third came not long after. Here the young Finnish pianist Paavali Jumppanen gives a reading which, if not outright called definitive by the composer, still seems to carry his approval.

Even for those familiar with much serial music, even if you've heard everything else Boulez composed, the piano sonatas can be difficult listening. In fact, in the beginning one might think it merely a series of bleeps and bloops without order. Gaining insight into these takes time, and in the beginning one should focus on the simple succession of individual gestures even if the musical development on a large scale can't be perceived. Over time, however, the sonatas unlock their secrets, and one begins to notice motifs and clever form.

The first two sonatas are not Boulez's first pieces--they were preceded by the recently rehabilitated "Notations" for piano (1945)--but they are Boulez's first individual achievement. In the "Piano Sonata No. 1" (1946) the sonorities of Webern (especially the "Symphonie" op. 21), coexist with an interest in dynamic and attack which is pure Boulez. The first movement is developed out of merely four opening gestures: a rising minor sixth, an appoggiatura, an isolated note, and a brusqe arpeggio. The second movement opens with cells all over the keyboard, and the dashing between octaves hints at Boulez's later solo piano work "Incises".

For much of his career has sought to take serialism beyond mere miniatures, like Webern, to grand designs. The four-movement "Piano Sonata No. 2" (1948) is, at nearly a half an hour long, an important venture in this direction. Popular opinions about Boulez as entirely detached from tradition will be amazed at the work's clear debt to Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" and "Waldstein" sonatas, and it even uses a B-A-C-H motif throughout. Its first movement is marked "extremement vif"--right off we find a violence and virtuosity never before heard in Boulez--and it posseses the elegant dramatic arc of classical sonata form, exposition--development--recapitulation. The second, slow movement is lyrical and melodic, while the brief (three-minute) third minute combines variation and scherzo form. The fourth movement, however, is extremely rich, made up of an introduction, a fugue, a rondo, and a coda. A twelve-tone fugue makes for exciting listening.

The "Piano Sonata No. 3" (1955-57) was written during Boulez's interest in quasi-aleatoric writing where the performer was free to decide the order of the piece's sections. Inspired by Mallarme and the possibility of a book in perpetual expansion, this quality can be found also in Boulez's "Eclat" and "Pli selon pli", though Boulez ultimately fixed the ordering of the latter. This sonata has remained uncompleted for almost fifty years, and of the five "formants" (not "movements", since they don't move forward) which are to make up the piece, only the second and third have been published. The Third Sonata is by far the most abstract of the three, and understanding its structure involves close listening, ideally with score at hand. While based on an interesting concept, it offers fewer possibilities for mere entertainment than the first two.

I'm loathe to criticize Jumppanen's performance, since Boulez sure thinks highly of it. So far I've only heard the recordings with Jumppanen and Idil Biret (on Naxos), and while the lighter touch of Biret is good listening, she flubs a few parts of the second that Jumppanen handles flawlessly. Jumppanen's use of pedal is much heavier, but it seems in keeping with the score. This recording has fine liner notes by Paul Griffiths, but for best understanding the sonatas I'd recommend getting a copy of Dominique Jameux's PIERRE BOULEZ (English translation Harvard University Press, 1991 ISBN 0-674-66740-9).

For me, Boulez really hit his stride after "Eclat", when he produced a number of works full of brilliant colour and elegant construction such as "Sur Incises", "...explosante-fixe..." and "Repons". I'd recommend those first to anyone curious about Boulez's music. Still, the piano sonatas are an interesting step in Boulez's musical development, as well as some of the most rigorous and adventurous serial writing of the generation after the Second Viennese School.

Great Third,and First; less so Second.......2005-03-13

The 'Second Sonata' of Boulez seems to get everyone confused,or stymied,afraid of its "abyss" it was his most violent gratuitous and brutal work, most exposed to the extremities of its own timbre. Pollini plays it like an automaton coldly,like he's a "phanthom" playing and not there, only Yvonne Loriod comprehends the times,the gestures of this piece if you contemplate it as a document certainly the Occupation of Paris in WW2 had some effect/affect on the young Pierre,riding the Metro with Messiaen and that culture was undergoing some form of demise or the transgressive.
His icons were of course those in literature;Rene Char and Mallarme who he really did not know well enough in the mid Forties to utilize in a work's concept, but certainly the theatre of cruelty of Artaud and much later the chiseled word games(plays) of Beckett. Loriod brings this incredible sense of endlessness to the timbre,abandoned to the narrative and deeply resonant, ringing continuously seemingly,and the premise of the work is "transgression" of the intervallic materials. The concept of the Sonata was chosen only to disintegrate its architecture; Jumppanen doesn't get this fully he was very timid,tenuous, and he seldom "took off"where tones became "noises" exceedingly polite at times; you never sense the timbral extremities of the work, that "other" realm that Boulez was interested in and continued to be with subsequent works. The first movement rhythmic cells,D-A-D#-G#,C# F-G should be charged with high combustible energy where the phrases foment and accrete toward greater crashes,"bottlenecks" of violence. The work should be thought through in this way, for then the relative calms within the four movements as the second movement is should not be too too calm and restained needlessly.The "surreal-like" second movement should be suggestive, not simply sustained intervals without direction. I felt this a bit. There is no momentum at all then so the work simply dissipates into an anti-aesthetic of nothingness.
These timid sensibilities gently skills however work quite well in the "First Sonata", Jumppanen goes for the discreetly beautiful,the sustained the tinckle of the opening,F#-D,F-Eb-E these threadbare exposed materials are gently compelling, then the more noise like arpeggiations are really interruptions of this beauty.Aimard you may find somewhere in between where he never sacrifices the overall brutal premise of the work's aesthetic. But then we get to Jumppanen and the 'Third Sonata', the mobile indeterminisms at work, work quite well. This now is a real piece of modernity,with a high conceptual premise, with exposed lines that can only depend upon themselves not an on=going intervallic narrative,or accreting contrasting movements, as we found in the other two Sonatas. Here each anti-movement (not movements for nothing really moves anywheres) but gestures, points, moments depend upon themselves, and in the 'Formant 3' the alternating contrasts of 'Points' to 'Blocs' is indeed engaging. You fall in with the 'Blocs' movements the more brutal suspended gestures,greater richness of piano timbre,with harmonics to "trail" the gesture into the next to the more threadbare private single tones in the 'Points'.There are also a wider pallette of timbre in the 'Third Sonata' here with a differing array of attacks to the piano keys, the use of all three pedals and harmonics, where you silently depressed tones then striking others to produce an eeery resonance, that really is barely auduble on this recoding and in a concert hall perhaps not at all.Jumppanen is wonderful here in the Third with a detached demeanor simply allowing the piece to fall off, and he seems much more willing to engage now the more brutal moments.

Pierre Boulez: Sonatas for Piano Nos. 1-3 - Herbert Henck

Average customer rating:

wonderful work from Henck

Pierre Boulez: Sonatas for Piano Nos. 1-3 - Herbert Henck

Manufacturer: Wergo
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000005WB4
Release Date: 1993-12-08

Customer Reviews:

wonderful work from Henck.......2006-01-26

Herbert Henck has been around a while nurturing the European avant-garde, the what now are classics. He has worked with Stockhausen playing all the "klavierstuck", the scene is now that young pianists of the avant-garde literature simply learned all there is, complete, its to me a post-modern indulgence similar as Adorno said someplace to a sporting event, we see how far each pianst can jump, how much pain they can endure, with hours long concerts. I would not sit through all the Boulez Sonatas in one evening, it is like eating three consecutive steaks, different cuts of coarse.

Here Henck's readings of the Boulez are fairly straightforward, the beautiful ugliness of the student early First Sonata still has a documentary value, written within the post-war period,largely influences by Boulez's mentor Messiaen, in rhythmic cells that come to define the musical space. The early Boulez like DNA aesthetically itself pre-determines the latter Boulez, his fascination with the beautiful object for contemplation, the shaped, determined teleological object situated within the trajectory of musical aesthetics. Webern and Schoenberg were also formative influecnes here. Henck is quite exquisite in his playing, being cold when required and pushing forward. The Second Sonata now we have the volume turned up, fult tilt now on four discreet movement, Boulez in interviews with Celestine Deliege, said he utilized Sonat-Form to subvert its content, to see what happens when excessive violence is put into play. Artaud and Beckett were primary"buzz" makers in Forties Paris, so the gratuitous violence, the overwhelming brutality is here, the piano's full resonance is rung dry. We also have the more "Surreal" like moments the second movement. The Third Sonata was an attempt at indeterminate means, John Cage was certainly an influence, with chance operations of his earlier "Music of Changes", and they had corresponded on these points. ( Book of these letters is published). The "Third Sonata" however is high Boulez, again a greater utilizations of the piano's timbre, with a complex array of attacks, using all the pedals, damper, sostenuto, and una corda. The "Third" was left incomplete and rightfully so for it is a work the pinaist puts together for a reading. Boulez however keeps these freedoms on a short leash, there are not really endless possibilities, the middle movement,functions much like a structural spine for which the tropes and "blocs circle around.

Average customer rating:

some problematics in conceptual trajectories = = =
Only Second Best

Boulez: 3 Sonatas
Boulez , and Helffer
Manufacturer: Disques Montaigne
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

Classical | Imports | Stores | Music
ASIN: B00004WKJ3
Release Date: 2000-09-12

Tracks:

Premiere Son: I. Lent
Premiere Son: II. Assez Large, Rapide
Deuxieme Son: I. Extremement Rapide
Deuxieme Son: II. Lent
Deuxieme Son: III. Modere, Presque Vif
Deuxieme Son: IV. vif
Troisieme Son: Formant 3 - Constellation-Miroir - Points 1 - Blocs I - Points 2 - Blocs II...
Formant 2 - Tropes: Textes - Parenthese - Glose - Commentaire

Customer Reviews:

some problematics in conceptual trajectories = = = .......2006-04-15

The First Sonata needs to find a conceptual place between its alternating lifeworlds of simplicity and brutality, the opening six ideas of the ringing sustained F# and D F to Eb, then the downward arpeggio,rapide in 32nd notes. Helffer is excellent. His interpretation must grow on you a bit. I initially thought as well all this speed served no function. You doiwant mystery in Boulez and multiplicities of momentum. Helffer instead gives us electrified timbres, with many times no discerable shapes.The balzing/blazing speed doesn't overdetermine,/predetermine the First as it would in the more sprawling bottle neck-violences of the Second Sonata.
I disagree on the merits of Pollini's reading of the Second Sonata. Pollini's Second is too cold and phanthom like, it produces clarity,yet no vision and little else, it doesn't move beyond the works uncompromising constitution,His Schoenberg is another story however.Perhaps the narrative there is more self-evident,more surface oriented.
For Boulez it is Yvonne Loriod. I prefer her, she came to understand the young Pierre deeply, touring with him even with his first book of 'structures', and the Yvonne's scope of the Second as enraged with a seeming endless resonance is remarkable,her rhytmic momentums she builds and dissaptes is also inspiring on the Second; if you can find it, it on an old Vega Vinyl.
Helffer ascends more to the indeterminate opulent elegant Third Sonata as Psi-Chen. This, the Third is now a completely different Boulez, with the path-breaking "Le Marteau sans Maitre" and the "structures" for two pianos under his experience as a composer.So the Third exploits more an indeterminate path,with greater arrays and layers of timbre, use of all the piano's pedals, articulation schemes, and opposing tropes of the sustained timbre to the arpeggiated ones. Marilyn Nonken also understands the Third, but Alas! no recordings only LIVE, In some respects you can clearly understand Helffer's penchant for pushing the speed in all these works in an irrational way, hurling fine exquisite lines, where the linear pitch logic comes to be reduced to its lowest common denominator.It pays quite little in interest in the Second, where the energized propelling motivics cells come to resemble simply mishapened noises. So the work is simply effect/affect. I think all these Sonatas work best with a sense of rhythmic freedom (within reason)something Boulez has/had cultivated his entire career.(Conducting Mahler for example, he finds where the freedom parts of the phrase exist in relation to the overall tempi, in"envelope" spaces) Yet the Loriod is truly indelible, you never forget it, yet Pollini is already forgotten, no impression Maurizio.Helffer has the courage to follow excitement.

Only Second Best.......2001-01-05

Helffer is trying to make these masterworks his own - but at the expense of clarity. Boulez needs clarity of performance, otherwise these piano pieces could be written by anybody. Helffer rushes almost all the time. Sometimes his fingers are moving so fast that the notes literally don't speak. A good example is the 2nd Sonata, 2nd movement. In this slow movement, there is a frank passage of 4 against 3. Helffer can't really delineate this rhythm - compare this with the excellent Pollini reading, where this simple rhythm is fashioned into an apotheosis.

Add to that (what seem to be) a few bad digital edits, and this disc is definitely second place. I don't know any better recording of the 1st or 3rd Sonatas, but Maurizio Pollini's 2nd Sonata is still the most breathtaking Boulez performance by a soloist.

Music Track:

Music Track

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