by During his lifetime, “work in the works” became a familiar label in Pierre Boulez ‘list of compositions, since many of his pieces were repeatedly revised and worked out during his career. Most finally achieved what Boulez considered the final state, but those who stayed the longest in compositional suspension was his only string quartet that he had started in 1948 (the year of his second piano sonata and the Cantata Le Soleil des Eaux). For many years, only five of the projected six movements were carried out (and recorded) by what he referred to Livre Pour Quatuor; The work only reached its final form after the composer’s death and almost 70 years after his production when the composer Philippe Manoury in 2017 completed the reconstruction of the fourth and longest of his movements.
When planning the quartet, Boulez Beethoven’s late quartet and Bergs Lyric Suite had taken as the starting point, not as much as models against which they could follow, but to react against it. Livre’s language creates its energy from the tension between the spirits of the classic forms and the pointillist -Total -Serialism, which the post -war generation of composers from the music of Weberg and Messiaen had shaped. From the beginning, too, Boulez had introduced it as a modular work from which the actors could choose which movements had to be played, and in what order, with a title that repeats the livre of the symbolic poet Mallarmé, a book whose loose leaves could be read in every order.
Quatuor Diotima was able to work with Boulez on the score of Livre in the last decade of his life in order to clarify his intentions and to solve the technical challenges. You recorded the five-movement version nine years ago, but this new CD, including the first recording of the fourth movement, is now the one that can be heard. The performance has enormous trust and authority and wonderfully conveys the dizzying contrasts of the work between strict silence and hectic activities, free, etyrated textures against dense. If Livre Pour Quatuor remains one of Boulez’s most demanding values, this disc will win many new admirers.
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