But he didn’t destroy everything. Entrusting one youthful score — completed in 1944, when Boulez was 19, and never performed publicly in his lifetime — to the Paul Sacher Foundation in Switzerland, this champion of modernism, who died in 2016, left open the possibility that his early traces might be discovered.
After reviewing that score, “Prélude, Toccata et Scherzo,” Dutch pianist Ralph van Raat persuaded Boulez’s heirs and the Sacher Foundation to allow a belated premiere at the Philharmonie de Paris last September. That first performance went well enough that more dates were scheduled.
When I heard van Raat play the roughly 20-minute piece at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in October, I began a phone and email dialogue with him about his approach to the work, in advance of his commercial recording for the Naxos label, planned for 2020. Here are edited excerpts from those conversations.
Q: Did looking at the score for the first time give you the sense of uncovering a “secret Boulez”?
A: I was of course very surprised when I saw it, the Romantic aspect. But at the same time it might explain or even prove how basically, to me, the First and Second Sonatas [from a few years later] feel like highly Romantic works.
They contain “rational” elements — of course, everybody always talks about the rational part of them. But at the same time, the big intervals, I see them as very expressive. Even if he writes “to completely destroy all beauty of sounds.” It is highly romantic to think that. I mean, it’s a little aggressive! But it’s also romantic. It’s a lot of emotions. I think the “Prélude, Toccata et Scherzo” kind of proves that he had it within his personality. This hyper-emotional or, let’s say, passionate aspect.
Q: You spoke at Carnegie about the first movement as bearing the influence of Bartok. And then you hear some Messiaen in the middle of the movement?
A: Messiaen used irregular kinds of rhythms. He would subtract or add a few beats to make it more interesting. That’s what Boulez also does in the middle section. Which is, I think, highly interesting. Because Boulez is generally known as a composer who has a great rational aspect to his compositions. To some people it’s a kind of coldness — or maybe objectivity is better.
But some of the telling indications that Boulez uses in the first movement are “très expressif” (“very expressive”), “doucement triste” (“mildly sad”), and “comme une plainte qui s’exaspère” (“like a lament that intensifies”). And that’s fantastic! It’s really almost expressionist. After that intensity is heightened, the beginning comes back with great pomp — everything is doubled. It’s almost traditional virtuosity, which Liszt also has, and Rachmaninoff. Big use of all the registers of the piano at the same time, as full as you can make it. Very orchestral. Weirder notes, but the feel is definitely romantic.
Q: What do you hear in the second movement?
A: I think the second movement already looks forward to the later Boulez. It’s harder to grasp in a way, because it seems rather improvisatory, because of the structure. You have a couple single-note passages that you have to play fast, with alternating hands. And all the time these toccata sections are alternated with internal fugal sections. Just kind of traditional fugues, like Bach did, but in a 12-tone system.
Toward the end he gets this very complex spider web of motives that are part of both the toccata and the fugue. And all these motives are stacked on top of each other, and it sounds completely random. At that moment, when as a listener you kind of lose it, he restarts some of these important themes in octaves, so you have some pointers. And you feel: “Oh, now I get it. They were just lost in all these complex atonal textures.”
Q: And then in the third movement?
A: What I find attractive is that it has these aggressive Boulez gestures already. Very pointy and spiky. That element is there, more than in any other movement. But it’s actually very groovy, the intervals that he uses: a lot of major and minor seventh chords. And stacked fourths on top of one another. They remind me of much contemporary jazz. Probably Boulez would not agree with that. But I like it very much.
Q: Given that you are playing and recording a piece he never published, what is your own sense of a performer’s liberty to disagree with Boulez after his death?
A: He didn’t want to publish it, it’s true. But he did keep it, for some reason. Maybe at least to study at some point. So when I asked the people — the Boulez heirs and the people at the Sacher Foundation — if I could play it, they said: “Well, yeah, but basically for study reasons. So you can perform it once, just for people to be able to hear it.”
Then they wanted another performance, and they agreed to a third performance. Because they heard it, and they did agree that it’s actually quite a good piece, and very informative.
You see in these three movements that he’s searching. He’s finding his way. Later, it’s all crystallized more. But this piece, I like it very much as a listener and as a player. It’s already difficult enough to understand Boulez. I love his works. But I do first want to admit that it’s hard stuff. And I very much like that in this piece we hear the same kind of principles he would use later, but in a clearer way.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.