Portrait Boulez & Stroppa 1

Could there be a composer who more aptly exemplifies the Festival’s  “Open End” theme than Pierre Boulez? He saw his compositions as  “work in progress,” often taking them up over and over to rework and enrich, and even continuing to add to what he had already done. Take his sole string quartet, which traverses nearly his entire career. Boulez had already completed a first version of the Livre pour quatuor when he was just 23 years old. But he introduced it over the following years only hesitantly, movement by movement, revising the work and even withdrawing it for a time. The fourth of the six movements remained a mere sketch until Boulez’s death. Irvine Arditti, the legendary first violin of the eponymous quartet, commissioned the French composer Philippe Manoury to complete it after Boulez’s death. In Lucerne, this  “book” for string quartet will be juxtaposed with a major work by composer-in-residence Marco Stroppa, whose Spirali projects the sonority of the string quartet using several loudspeakers. The result is a “sound sphere” that envelops the audience, with the musical material unfolding in constant motion as it seems to form a spiral.