All change in the Boulez boutique
mainThe French culture minister Françoise Nyssen has named a new chief executive for the Ensemble Intercontemporain, succeeding Hervé Boutry whom Pierre Boulez appointed in 1995.
The new chief is Olivier Leymarie, an all-purpose kind of administrator who presently runs the Erda accentus chamber choir and is joint head of production at the Cité de la Musique and the Philharmonie de Paris.
The Ensemble Intercontemporain has never been the same since Boulez left the building. Standards will continue to decline. We’ll be hearing wannabe Philip Glass composers coming out of there in no time.
Maybe the International Retirement Control of Acidulous Mediocrities an help (IRCAM).
Maybe you don’t like “wannabe Philip Glass composers”, but that doesn’t mean that all new music must be “wannabe Pierre Boulez composers” either.
Rather than judging the esthetic why not wait and judge the quality of the music and its craftsmanship?
It’s a LOT easier to simply make derogatory comments about an esthetic one doesn’t like than it is to make well though out evaluations on the merits of a work regardless of esthetic.
Good time for the Ensemble Intercontemporain to commission an orchestration of Couperin’s Les fastes de la grande et ancienne Ménestrandise.
Oh, goodie.