Ensemble InterContemporain

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
A good performance of Birtwistle's Tragoedia for chamber ensemble should be shocking, bristling, hair-raising; Pierre Boulez and the Ensemble InterContemporain perform here as if they're in an elegant 19th-century salon. Everything's in tune, but there's no passion: it's almost breezy. Boulez is more comfortable with the exquisite, transparent moments in the score, which are played beautifully; but that's only one side of the fascinating British composer. Three other works are on the disc, including Secret Theatre and settings of poet Paul Celan. --Joshua Cody

Harrison Birtwistle: Secret Theater / Tragoedia / Five Distances / Three Settings of Celan - Pierre Boulez / Ensemble InterContemporain, Music, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Pierre Boulez, Christine Whittlesey, Ensemble InterContemporain, Chamber, Chamber Music, Classical, Classical Composers, Classical Music, Solo Voice(s) and Small Ensemble, Vocal

Harrison Birtwistle: Secret Theater / Tragoedia / Five Distances / Three Settings of Celan - Pierre Boulez / Ensemble InterContemporain
Average customer rating:

Generic modernism with only a few interesting moments.

Great Birtwistle's chamber music in a marvellous recording.

Hello

Harrison Birtwistle: Secret Theater / Tragoedia / Five Distances / Three Settings of Celan - Pierre Boulez / Ensemble InterContemporain
Sir Harrison Birtwistle , Pierre Boulez , Christine Whittlesey , and Ensemble InterContemporain
Manufacturer: Deutsche Grammophon
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music
General | Classical | Styles | Music
General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music
Deutsche Grammophon: Music | Specialty Stores | Music
ASIN: B000001GM9
Release Date: 1996-03-12

Tracks:

TRAGOEDIA: Tragoedia; I. Prologue
TRAGOEDIA: II. Parados
TRAGOEDIA: III. Episodion: Strophe I -- Anapaest I
TRAGOEDIA: IV. Antistrophe I
TRAGOEDIA: V. Stasimon
TRAGOEDIA: VI. Episodion: Strophe II -- Anapaest II
TRAGOEDIA: VII. Antistrophe II
TRAGOEDIA: VIII. Exodos
FIVE DISTANCES: Five Distances for Five Instruments
THREE SETTINGS OF CELAN: Three Settings of Celan for Soprano and Five Instruments; I. White and Light
THREE SETTINGS OF CELAN: II. Night
THREE SETTINGS OF CELAN: III. Tenebrae
SECRET THEATER: Secret Theatre

Amazon.com

A good performance of Birtwistle's Tragoedia for chamber ensemble should be shocking, bristling, hair-raising; Pierre Boulez and the Ensemble InterContemporain perform here as if they're in an elegant 19th-century salon. Everything's in tune, but there's no passion: it's almost breezy. Boulez is more comfortable with the exquisite, transparent moments in the score, which are played beautifully; but that's only one side of the fascinating British composer. Three other works are on the disc, including Secret Theatre and settings of poet Paul Celan. --Joshua Cody

Customer Reviews:

Generic modernism with only a few interesting moments........2007-02-07

This Deutsche Grammophon collection of four pieces by Harrison Birtwistle, performed by the Ensemble Intercontemporain and Pierre Boulez, was originally released in 1996. In 2001 it got a reissue in a two-disc set in Decca's "The British Music Collection" (making Birtwistle one of the most unlikely composers to appear on Decca), so if you're considering this material, seek out that.

The early "Tragoedia" (1965) is the most interesting of the pieces here. A reference to Greek ceremonies connected to Pan (being literally a goat, trag- song, -oedia), the eight movements of the work follow classical nomenclature, write strophes, anapests, and antistrophes. It moves from soundworld to soundworld along its twenty-minute span, from simple Romanticism to a minimalistic ostinato reminescent of some Reich, to the sort of smooth modernistic textures of later composers like Lindberg. Yet, it's still remarkably coherent.

I wish I such much positive about the other pieces on the disc. "Five Distances" for five instruments (1992), a wind quintet, has nothing especially upsetting, but lacks direction and resembles the generic modernism of Lieberson, or Eotvos as his worst. The "Three Settings of Celan" for ensemble and soprano, here Christine Whittlesey, are taken from a total set of nine such pieces composed between 1989 and 1996, manage to make a poet as intriguing and bizarre as Celan dull and forgettable. Finally, "Secret Theatre" (1984) promises to finally escape this "serialist assembly-line" as a fellow reviewer has called it, and seems to build at something with the low instruments, but never manages.

I must admit this disc doesn't spur me on to discover any more of Birtwistle's work. Rarely am I so disappointed by a composer, but even the goodness of "Tragoedia" doesn't make it worthy of recommendation.

Great Birtwistle's chamber music in a marvellous recording........2005-11-16

Pierre Boulez long relation with the music of Harrison Birtwistle comes from the very early times of the Ensemble Intercontemporain as can be heard in this CD in all its splendour, even if this is a chamber CD of very little and concentrated pieces.

The instrumental playing is very "boulezian", clear and precise, making Birtwistle music much more continental, as he is, together with Ferneyhough the most "european" british composer.

I know another very good recording of Secret Theater, by MusikFabirk with Johannes Kalitzke, recorded by CPO, a bit more "modern" in style than this. Both are wonderful recordings.

The recording is very good, very clear and perfect for chamber's music.

This CD is now out of DG's catalogue, but you can buy it in a double CD released by Decca with Birtwistle's music, No. 468 804-2 , together with Panic & Earth Dances by the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Dohnanyi, a great CD too.

Hello.......2001-03-19

Funny music make me feel sad and sleepy

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