Name: Guest concert: Pierre Boulez 100
Start: 2025-06-11T20:00:00
Location: Elbphilharmonie Hamburg

June 2025 marks an exciting chapter in Baden-Baden's cultural calendar with the SWR Symphonieorchester orchestrating a symphony of events. Celebrations kick off with the Pentecost Festival, featuring diverse performances from late-night symphonies to chamber music by Ligeti and Ravel. The spotlight shines on Pierre Boulez's centenary, with François-Xavier Roth leading tributes through compositions blending timeless classics with avant-garde experiments. As the month progresses, chamber concerts explore works by Cras, Penderecki, and Koechlin, while an engaging children's concert invites young ones to sing and dance. The celebration crescendoes with Dvořák and Zemlinsky's compositions, conducted by the talented Giedrė Šlekytė.

Baden-Baden's Symphony of Sounds: A June Festival of Masterpieces

François-Xavier Roth

SWR Symphonieorchester

Pierre Boulez would have turned 100 this year. The Baden-Baden Festival Hall is celebrating the city's famous honorary citizen in several concerts - this one is certainly one of the highlights. Two "young" works by Pierre Boulez meet Anton Bruckner's great last symphony. It remained unfinished, but opens the door wide to modernity. Pierre Boulez greatly appreciated Bruckner, often conducted him and played a key role in making Bruckner one of the recognized great symphonists today. In addition, "Figures - Doubles - Prismes" by Boulez can be heard. The title of the work says it all: figures are varied, doubled. In the final section, "Prismes", the previous work appears in a new light, a kind of retrospective on the early work in 1957, re-examined in 1968. Then a vocal work by Pierre Boulez: The poems of EE Cummings inspired him to an experiment. Cummings used language beyond its meaning as material for new, complex and ambiguous language compositions. Boulez has transferred the form and structure of these poems into music with his own sovereign mastery, combining text and music into an exciting and poetic whole.

Guest concert: Pierre Boulez 100

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