He has the perfect attitude towards his music, and yes - one senses he has been a brilliant pianist in his youth. A rare and beautiful document of a great musician remembering his "Opus 1"...
Boulez said that he stopped playing the piano because: to conduct, you need a somehow rigid hand, and to play piano, you need a kind of flexibility (I forgot the exact words he said). But does anyone know the story behind this recording or any information about this?
It is more or less the equivalent for Boulez of the little pieces op. 19 of Schoenberg. The serial principle is simple. There is a basic dodecaphonic row. The row of the first piece is that row. The row of the second piece begins with the second note of the row, and the first note comes to the end, etc. up to the last note.
Actually the first piece begins with the 11 first notes of the row (Ab.... Bb Eb D A! E, C, F, C#, G. F#!) Then there is a chord at bar 4, followed by the missing B, in the upper registry, in octave. I didn't imagine I could find octaves in Boulez's piano writing.
Apparently this was filmed for Austrian television. On RU-vid I can only find his performance of the 1st notation (this video) and the 4th notation. Were the whole 12 notations filmed with him playing?
?....you might appreciate thé performance of DIMITRI VASSILAKIS playing those. ( BOULEZ himself delegated this pianist to play " incises in the NY CARNEGIE HALL)....
He absolutely does not play a wrong note. I have known these pieces for twenty years. I've played them myself and heard them played by many, many people. There is not a wrong note here.
