Boulez - Schoenberg / Berio / Carter / Kurtág / Xenakis (1995)

Collecting five CDs for about the price of three, this set of Boulez recordings is without parallel among the conductor's new-music releases. Imagine getting Boulez's celebrated single CD of Luciano Berio's Sinfonia and Eindrücke and his equally impressive single CD of Arnold Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande and Variations for Orchestra, bundled with four pivotal Elliott Carter works, Sir Harrison Birtwistle's electrifying ...AGM..., Gérard Grisey's Modulations, Iannis Xenakis's Jalons, Hugues Dufourt's Antiphysis, and Brian Ferneyhough's Funerailles, and you have an idea how far this set stretches.

There are the uproarious moments of Berio's clattery free-for-all approach easily juxtaposed against Schoenberg's more measured Variations, as it illuminates the crossroads of serialism and standard classical methodologies. The most astonishing moments come in the Kurtag songs, themselves echoing Pierrot Lunaire, and the Birtwistle work, which crosses extended vocal patterns with exclamatory orchestral interruptions to great effect. For anyone interested in Boulez's conductorly contributions to the postserial world, this is a surefire collection that opens the window on the great one's magic with difficult, thorny music. It also serves as a fascinating primer on the expansion of new music's techniques, especially when you consider the Elliott Carter works, all of them post-1975 and each uniquely expanding the American canon immeasurably, or the Grisey, Dufourt, and Ferneyhough works, as each of these composers came of age in the post-World War II era. --Andrew Bartlett