The centenary of Pierre Boulez’s birth has been celebrated with concerts, books and recordings. The Diotima Quartet’s Pentatone CD of Livre pour quatuor (1948-1949, 2017) is a distinctive offering in that it includes a previously unperformed version of the piece. With permission and supervision of Boulez, the composer Philippe Manoury assisted in completing the fourth movement for Diotima. Thus, this is the first complete recording of Livre pour quatuor. At nearly an hour long, it is one of the largest of Boulez’s early compositions.
Pizzicato and glissando are liberally applied in discrete sections, as are aggressive angular attacks in others. All of these can be traced back to the Second Viennese School. Often, there is a particularly Webernian pointillism at work, but elsewhere there are explosive gestures and effusive passages that recall Schoenberg and Berg. The use of complex rhythms likely was in part learned from Messiaen. Influences are distinctive, but so is the burgeoning individuality of Boulez’s compositional aesthetic.
To Manoury’s credit, the fourth movement is consistent with the rest of the work. At twelve minutes in duration, it is the longest movement, with a number of passages that recall music from previous sections. It serves as a summary of the quartet’s materials and climax of its dramatic arc.
Quatuor Diotima plays with extraordinary attention to the details of the score. At the same time, they also provide a rendition of the piece that is emotive and expressive, avoiding the mechanics one sometimes hears in performances of post-tonal works.
It seems hard to countenance, but Livre pour quatuor was first drafted when Boulez was only twenty-four. A highly personal and evocative piece, built with an organicism that allows it to hold, even command, interest for an entire hour, it is a great work from the early postwar avant-garde.
NEW YORK – Celebrating their twentieth year, the vocal ensemble Stile Antico brought a program dedicated to the 500th anniversary of the composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s birth to Miller Theatre’s Early Music Series. The concert was held at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in midtown, a space that Miller has employed to host a number of Renaissance music performances.
Stile Antico appeared with only eleven singers, instead of their usual complement of a dozen. Baritone Gareth Thomas was ill and couldn’t perform. Between numbers, several of the singers hid surreptitious coughs, leading one to think that a bug had plagued the group en route. The quality of the performance didn’t suffer: they still sang sublimely.
The centerpiece of Stile Antico’s latest recording, The Golden Era: Palestrina (Decca, 2025), is perhaps his most famous piece, Missa Papae Marcelli. A great deal of lore has grown up around it, with a story that Palestrina wrote it in part to convince the more conservative members of the Council of Trent that they needn’t ban polyphony and revert exclusively to plainchant in services. Composers could write in multiple parts and still clearly convey the text. While it is unlikely that the Pope Marcellus Mass served as a test piece, Palestrina took pains to write polyphony that never obscured the words. Many composers, some even generations later, imitated what had come to be called the stile antico style of declamation and use of dissonance.
Stile Antico’s performance of Missa Papae Marcelli on the recording is impressive, a standout that is among the best in a crowded field. Their diction is crystal clear, and the tone and blend of the ensemble is particularly beautiful. At St. Mary’s, the mass’s Credo was featured, and it was an expansive display that was well-paced to express the drama inherent in various passages of the piece.
A number of motets by the composer were also included on the program. Tu es Petrus and Exsultate Deo displayed fleet runs and ricocheting exchanges. Sicut servus was performed with fetching delicacy, and Nigra sum sed formosa was imbued with stately elegance.
Photo: Eduardus Lee.
Composers besides Palestrina who also served in Rome were on the program as well. Josquin’s Salve regina, with a stark bass motive and a texture frequently divided into duets, represented one of the most prominent elder statesmen of the early Renaissance. Jacques Arcadelt’s Pater noster is an example of the florid writing and frequent use of extra-liturgical texts and tunes that contributed to the aforementioned controversy at the Council of Trent. It is hard to lay blame at Arcadelt’s doorstep when hearing his music, which is pleasing in its bustling rhythms and multihued chords. Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Trahe me post te and Orlando de Lassus’s Musica dei donum represented works by esteemed contemporaries. The former has an austere yet attractive manner and the latter, a six-voice motet, is more intricate in presentation. Christus resurgens was by Gregorio Allegri, a composer of the next generation, who continued in Palestrina’s footsteps, composing music in stile antico style. The piece’s use of antiphony is particularly striking. Another later composer, Felice Anerio, who succeeded Palestrina in the Papal Choir, combined passages of relatively homophonic declamation with expressive chromaticism in his Christus factus est.
The program also included a new work, A Gift of Heaven by the English composer Cheryl Frances Hoad, who used the preface to a publication by Palestrina, in which he flattered the dedicatee, as the text for her piece. Sumptuous polychords undergirded a solo tenor imparting what Frances Hoad describes as “buttering up a patron.”
Sadly, Stile Antico at eleven could not finish the program with the impressive 12-voice motet Laudate Dominum a 12. They substituted another Palestrina work, Surge Propera Amica Mea, with corruscating runs and an impressive final cadential section, creating an exuberant finale. The group returned to offer something completely different for an encore, “The Silver Swan,” a madrigal by the English composer Orlando Gibbons. It provided a delicately lyrical close to an evening of exquisitely well-performed music.
Alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón’s seventeenth album, Golden City has been well-received, its plaudits including a 2025 Grammy nomination for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album. The eleven original compositions are excellent vehicles for soloing.
A standout is “Acts of Exclusion.” After a hocketing opening from the horns – Diego Urcola, Alan Ferber, and Jacob Garchik – and pianist Matt Mitchell, there is a robust essay by the alto saxophonist that combines the quick syncopation of the tune with undulating lines. He trades licks with Mitchell and then cedes the stage to guitarist Miles Okazaki, who returns to the narrower band of the opening, repeating tart, staccato attacks and finally moving up the guitar’s neck with a glissando and the tune in its upper register. Mitchell, bassist Chris Tordini, and drummer Dan Weiss, provide a transition back to the head, with saxophone and winds returning to the hocketing, repeated notes from Mitchell, and Okazaki presenting a fiery recapitulation.
The horn section is showcased on “Wave of Change,” with an extended blues opening that coalesces on the head in octaves, then the rhythm section roaringly arrives. Zenón, an octave higher, joins the rest of the horns. An outro features the saxophonist soloing over Mitchell’s accompaniment.
“SRO” begins sinuously, with on-the-beat punctuations set against syncopated riffs and Latin-tinged drumming. A quick tempo bass and drums duet introduces a new section on which Zenón paces them note for note and, late in the piece, the rest of the horn section adds mercurial interjections, followed by an ambience that recalls the beginning, but with a fuller presentation. Okazaki gets a brief solo turn to conclude.
Surrounded by dyadic horns and a stealthy bass line doubled in the piano, “Displacement and Erasure” contains Zenón’s most extended and effusive playing. His use of bends, repeated notes, and angular leaps through modal patterns culminates in a feverish altissimo register climax. Ferber also gets a memorable solo turn that features clarion high notes and breathless long phrases.
The final track, “Golden,” opens with telegraph signal reiterations from Mitchell and call and response in the horns. The main section has a layered arrangement that Zenón interacts with before trading fours with Urcola and Ferber. Three different ostinatos in horns, piano, and bass conclude the proceedings.
The praise for Zenón is well-earned: Golden City features superlative playing and artful arrangements. It will be tough to top, but I would bet this saxophonist just might.
