Les Siècles

Eleven years after the last appearance by Pierre Boulez at the Théâtre, his memory still lives on. The legacy of this towering figure of the second half of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century is closely associated with avenue Montaigne – at the helm of the Orchestre de Paris, the Wiener Philharmoniker, the LSO, and his Ensemble intercontemporain, as a composer, or simply as a spectator. Who better to celebrate this centenary than Les Siècles, who often met him. For this centenary, Les Siècles, accompanied by Sabine Devieilhe, have chosen to perform the iconic Pli selon Pli, Portrait de Mallarmé by Boulez, premiered in 1958. With Debussy in counterpoint, they demonstrate,  “the extent to which the French Impressionist technique gave musicians subtlety and an imaginative approach to sound”. Mallarmé features once again with Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé in an arrangement for orchestra by Heinz Holliger, in tandem with La Mer. For these two classics, for Les Siècles will deploy gut strings and period woodwind instruments to recreate all the original colours of the works.

Coproduction Théâtre des Champs-Elysées | Les Siècles