Pierre Boulez – Livre pour quatuor

Quatuor Diotima

Pentatone Record CD/download

The centenary of Pierre Boulez’s birth has been celebrated with concerts, books and recordings. The Diotima Quartet’s Pentatone CD of Livre pour quatuor (1948-1949, 2017) is a distinctive offering in that it includes a previously unperformed version of the piece. With permission and supervision of Boulez, the composer Philippe Manoury assisted in completing the fourth movement for Diotima. Thus, this is the first complete recording of Livre pour quatuor. At nearly an hour long, it is one of the largest of Boulez’s early compositions.

Pizzicato and glissando are liberally applied in discrete sections, as are aggressive angular attacks in others. All of these can be traced back to the Second Viennese School. Often, there is a particularly Webernian pointillism at work, but elsewhere there are explosive gestures and effusive passages that recall Schoenberg and Berg. The use of complex rhythms likely was in part learned from Messiaen. Influences are distinctive, but so is the burgeoning individuality of Boulez’s compositional aesthetic. 

To Manoury’s credit, the fourth movement is consistent with the rest of the work. At twelve minutes in duration, it is the longest movement, with a number of passages that recall music from previous sections. It serves as a summary of the quartet’s materials and climax of its dramatic arc. 

Quatuor Diotima plays with extraordinary attention to the details of the score. At the same time, they also provide a rendition of the piece that is emotive and expressive, avoiding the mechanics one sometimes hears in performances of post-tonal works. 

It seems hard to countenance, but Livre pour quatuor was first drafted when Boulez was only twenty-four. A highly personal and evocative piece, built with an organicism that allows it to hold, even command, interest for an entire hour, it is a great work from the early postwar avant-garde. 

-Christian Carey