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#BoulezGuide part 2, @TomService's Twitter notes for 'Dialogue de l'ombre double'
The second of Barenboim's 2012 Proms featured Beethoven's 4th Symphony, an awe-inspiring Eroica and Boulez's 'Dialogue de l'ombre double'. Here are Tom Service's Twitter notes for the Boulez.
The music of the invisible clarinet on tape meandering, forming, swirling round the hall. (TS) #boulezguide- Until in the light, the real clarinet starts the first of the 6 ‘strophes’ he will play…(TS) #boulezguide
- But the shadow disagrees: this next section on tape starts with the trills – but then explodes them, brusquely, sharply. (TS) #boulezguide
- There’s a gentle truce between Jussef’s clarinet and his shadow for the 2nd ‘strophe’… (TS) #boulezguide
- The next shadowy transition, talking a clam, slow, low, sensual line for a walk through the space and the speakers… (TS) #boulezguide
- …before sounds rich & strange as the on-stage player starts the 3rd ‘strophe’: weird clarinet chords and violent explosions(TS) #boulezguide
- The shadow is in open conflict now; this sinewy, ethereal gets faster and faster…(TS) #boulezguide
- … and Jussef picks up the tempo in the 4th strophe: a moto perpetuo that dances and shimmers and doesn’t let up – until… (TS) #boulezguide
- …the shadow comprehendeth it not; fractured bursts of sounds spin around the space. (TS) #boulezguide
- … which the on-stage clarinet takes to another level of insistent, rhythmical, splintered virtuosity. (TS) #boulezguide
- The shadow-double can only respond with incomprehension and chaos. (TS) #boulezguide
- - music that flies through the whole range of the instrument; soaring, screaming. (TS) #boulezguide
- Which leaves the shadow at the start of the final section of this virtuosic dialogue…(TS) #boulezguide
- But the conversation is not over: Jussef joins his shadow in playing a stratospherically high D -(TS) #boulezguide
- …and the dialogue ends with player & shadow sharing an uneasy note in the gloom. (TS) #boulezguide
