LXII. BOULEZ, Pierre: Sonatine for Flute and Piano

LXII. BOULEZ, Pierre (1925-2016)

Sonatine for Flute and Piano (1946)
Sophie Cherrier, flute
Sébastien Vichard, piano
(11:53)

One's experiences in childhood can have a life-long effect on later perceptions.

I was pretty young -- maybe 10 or 11 -- when I started to go to Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh and check out scores and records of all kinds of music.

My oldest sister, Lynn (z'l) would drive me there on Saturdays and I would pore over everything ... and then decide what I was going to take home to study.

Stockhausen, Boulez, Cage, Penderecki ... it all fascinated me and made my ears tingle.

But this piece had a special resonance in my young mind.

One of Boulez's earliest compositions (he was 21), it is serially organized, but has a kind of propulsion to it that I had never heard in any other music. And so intimate, just a flute and an exploding piano.

By "serially organized," check out the first two bars:

Count all the notes (including the F-natural grace note) ... it adds up to 12, and none of them are the same pitch. There's your 12-tone row in the first two bars!

Put your ears on and give it a listen. This is a fine performance.