Death of the composer and conductor Pierre Boulez
The French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, who was closely associated with the Lucerne Festival, died last night in Baden-Baden at the age of 90, according to his family.
Historically speaking, Lucerne owes its acquaintance with Pierre Boulez to his greatest friend and patron Paul Sacher, writes Lucerne Festival Director Michael Haefliger in an initial tribute. As a member of the program committee at the time, Sacher had already recommended Boulez as a conductor in the 1960s. He introduced the composer to Lucerne audiences in a talk concert in 1983, after Boulez had first performed here with the New York Philharmonic in two concerts in 1975.
Lucerne Festival, continued Haefliger, thanks Pierre Boulez "for his invaluable contribution to the further development of a festival in whose heart the commitment to tomorrow's generation of musicians and the music of our time plays and will play a decisive role".
Born in Montbrison in 1925, Pierre Boulez studied with Olivier Messiaen and René Leibowitz. With Douze Notations (1945) and two piano sonatas (1946/48), he made his first appearance as a composer; his worldwide reputation was cemented above all by the premiere of the chamber cantata Le Marteau sans Maître (1955) in Baden-Baden.
As a conductor, he was music director of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (1960-72) and the New York Philharmonic (1971-75). Subsequently, from 1976 to 1991, he was director of IRCAM, the research institute for contemporary music at the Centre Pompidou, which he founded, and of the Ensemble intercontemporain in Paris.
He founded the Lucerne Festival Academy in 2003. Pierre Boulez has been awarded the Siemens Music Prize, the "Praemium Imperiale", the Theodor W. Adorno Prize, the "Polar Music Prize", the "Kyoto Prize" and the Adenauer de Gaulle Prize.
