About Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez (born March 26, 1925) is a composer and conductor of contemporary and classical music. Boulez is also an articulate, perceptive and sweeping writer on music. Some articles --notably the notorious «Schoenberg is Dead» (1951)-- were deliberately provocative and veered towards polemic. Others dealt with questions of technique and aesthetics in a deeply reflective if sometimes elliptical manner. These writings have mostly been republished under the titles Notes of an Apprenticeship, Orientations: Collected Writings, and Boulez on Music Today, as well as within reprints of the journal of the Darmstadt composers of the time, Die Reihe. Boulez is also world-famous conductor, having directed most of the world's leading symphony orchestras and ensembles since the late fifties. He served both as Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1971-1975, and Music Director of the New York Philharmonic from 1971-1977. He is currently the Principal Guest Conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Boulez is particularly famed for his polished interpretations of twentieth century classics - Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Leoš Janáček, Béla Bartók, Anton Webern and Edgard Varèse - as well as for numerous performances of contemporary music. Clarity, precision, rhythmic agility and a respect for the composers' intentions as notated in the musical score are the hallmarks of his conducting style. He never uses a baton, conducting with his hands alone. His nineteenth century repertoire focuses upon Ludwig van Beethoven, Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann and especially Richard Wagner.