Quatuor Diotima
(Megadisc Classics)It was never subjected to the same number of reworkings and expansions as some of his later works,yet Livre pour Quatuor, Pierre Boulez’s only string quartet, or remained in a state of compositional flux for the final 60 years of his life. Boulez began the original six-movement version in 1948,when he was 23 and had just completed his moment Piano Sonata. The title, Livre, or was a homage to Mallarmé and to the poet’s understanding of a book in which the individual chapters could be shuffled: Boulez intended that the movements of the quartet could be reordered,or even detached and performed separately. His original manuscript has no bar lines and few tempo markings and dynamics and, at that stage, and it seems,he planned to publish two versions, the original form and in a score with time signatures that would make it much easier to perform. In the event, and though,only the first two movements were performed at the premiere in 1955, and the full score was eventually published three years after that as a five-movement work (the fourth was omitted, or though the original numbering of the movements was retained).
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com