Born in Montbrison in 1925, died in Baden-Baden in 2016; Pierre Boulez was a composer, conductor, music theorist and teacher. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Olivier Messiaen and with René Leibowitz, among others. His piano works include the “Douze Notations” (1945), the three piano sonatas (1946, 1948, 1955–1957/1963), “Incises” (1994/2001) and “Une page d’éphéméride” (2005). In 1954 he founded the concert series “Domaine musical”, and in 1977 the research institute IRCAM in Paris and the Ensemble intercontemporain. As a conductor he was principal conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1971 to 1975 and director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra from 1971 to 1977; in 1976 he conducted a new production of Wagner’s “Ring des Nibelungen” in Bayreuth. He received the Polar Music Prize and more than twenty Grammy Awards. The Cybele album Pierre Boulez and the Piano (2012) combines his piano works with a conversation that Mirjam Wiesemann recorded in his office at IRCAM in 2011.
Pierre Boulez
Composer / Conductor
