* 28 July 1925, Sofia - 13 November 1997, Paris
André Boucourechliev belongs to the important figures of the time of serialism and Aleatorism in Paris of the 50s to 70s. In his most important compositions he gives the performers decisive freedom and leads them with well thought-out structures, models and instructions to their own spontaneous solutions to his music, which remain unique in every performance. Among his most important works for piano are his Piano Concerto (1975), the 6 Etudes d'aprés Piranése (1975) and the various works entitled Archipel I-V in various formations. In addition to his activities as a composer, Boucourechliev was also a pianist, writer and musicologist. He published countless essays on the music of his time as well as monographs on the old classics (e.g. on Schumann, Chopin and Beethoven).
"André Boucourechliev reste attaché tout au long de sa vie créatrice à une certaine poétique de l'indétermination - parfaitement compatible, selon lui, avec des formes fermées."
("André Boucourechliev remained attached throughout his creative life to a certain poetry of indeterminacy - perfectly compatible, in his opinion, with closed forms.") Jean Ducharme (cited from www.ircam.fr)
Enjoy the PIANOVERSAL listening tips with piano music by André Boucourechliev !
PIANOVERSAL listening tips: André Boucourechliev
Boucourechliev wrote about the connection between serialism and the indeterminate approach to music:
"The univocal trajectory of the work of the past, its inevitable, predictable and reassuring outcome, is now replaced by the random, a musical time open to a thousand possible outcomes. Yesterday, until recently an implacable system of organization, serial music became a form of thought, a way of living time in its discontinuity and its lack of purposefulness, the moment to reveal the fleeting constellations of a composition....".
André BOUCOURECHLIEV, « Qu'est-ce que la musique sérielle ? », France Observateur, 591, 31 août 1961, p. 17. Repris dans A l'Ecoute, Paris, Fayard, 2006, p. 38.
Piano Concerto (1975)
youtube_Boucourechliev_pianoconcerto
Claude Helffer, piano Orchestre National de France
Archipel IV
youtube_Boucourechliev_ArchipelIV
Prodromos Symeonidis - piano. Live Februar 2006
Among the 5 works called Archipelago I-V Boucourechliev explains his inspiration from a longer stay in the USA:
"It is not the apology of the random, but that of the fleeting, the instantaneous, that does not repeat itself. And I think that the Archipels derive from these contacts; without the United States I would not have written the Archipels [...]. Earle Brown's influence is decisive: "In Brown's work,[...] the performer listens to his partners and is called upon to react freely to what he hears, with a musical material developed for this purpose (Available Forms I and II). Interpreters are therefore not the "masters of a form", but part of an unpredictable formal process that is experienced as necessary. It is this general direction that the Archipels have pursued and developed [...]." This set of five works (1967-1971) "would have been inconceivable without the American experience, but also without the lived awareness of the Webernian and Debussyist heritage".
soureces (www.ircam.fr):
André BOUCOURECHLIEV, « Qu'est-ce que la musique sérielle ? », France Observateur, 591, 31 août 1961, p. 17. Repris dans A l'Ecoute, Paris, Fayard, 2006, p. 38.
Entretien avec Jean-Ducharme 1993
André BOUCOURECHLIEV, Dire la musique, Paris, Minerve, coll. "Musique Ouverte", 1995, p. 182.
Archipel IV
youtube_Boucourechliev_archipelIV_version2
David Brooks - piano
Stony Brook University doctoral recital April 3, 2014
Archipel I (für 2 Klavier und 2 Perkussionisten (1966/67)
youtube_boucourechliev_archipel_II
Claude Helffer & Hakon Haustbö - piano, Roland Auzet & Jean-Pierre Drouet - percussion
6 Etudes d'aprés Piranése (1975)
youtube_boucourechliev_etudes
Claude Helffer - piano
Anarchipel (1970)
youtube_boucourechliev_anarchipel
Brigitte Sylvestre, Elisabeth Chojnacka, Françoise Rieunier, François-Frédéric Guy, Roland Auzet, Jean-Pierre Drouet.
Further information about André Boucourechliev can be found on the official website of the "Fondation André Boucourechliev":
www.boucourechliev.com
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André Boucourechliev: composer of the week No. 26 / December 2018