The other day I was in the library at Normal University in Shida. Great library! Anyway I was reading through a stack of books including Dutilleux and Benjamin Britten. Someone said something like: it's like you have the horse saddled up, but you should be comfortable in the saddle. That's it! You have to figure out all the bits and pieces of technique, the finger, hand, wrist arm, shoulder...But then you have to be comfortable and journey comfortably. Now I just have to go back and find where exactly did I read that!..
Meanwhile anyone wishing for a great piano composer, look no further than Dutilleux! What a star! More humane than Boulez, more selective in his output than the verbose Messiaen, he is definitely my favourite French composer from the second half of the 20th century. (Actually he passed away only last year). Snubbed by the french government and status quo, he ignored this, and quietly continued with his precise refined compositions. It did him no harm that his wife Genevieve Joy was such a fine pianist!
Benjamin Britten, meanwhile, didn't actually like the piano sound, so he favoured words with music, inspired by his partner Peter Pears. In some ways this cultured, literary musician was parallel to Francois Poulenc, who was so very enamoured of the poetry of Eluard, Apollinaire et al, whose poetry he set to voice and accompanied Pierre Bernac. Such hidden cultural riches!
Meanwhile anyone wishing for a great piano composer, look no further than Dutilleux! What a star! More humane than Boulez, more selective in his output than the verbose Messiaen, he is definitely my favourite French composer from the second half of the 20th century. (Actually he passed away only last year). Snubbed by the french government and status quo, he ignored this, and quietly continued with his precise refined compositions. It did him no harm that his wife Genevieve Joy was such a fine pianist!
Benjamin Britten, meanwhile, didn't actually like the piano sound, so he favoured words with music, inspired by his partner Peter Pears. In some ways this cultured, literary musician was parallel to Francois Poulenc, who was so very enamoured of the poetry of Eluard, Apollinaire et al, whose poetry he set to voice and accompanied Pierre Bernac. Such hidden cultural riches!
Dutilleux is a great composer indeed. His music innovates and goes places which no composer has before him. The notion that Dutilleux was a backwater is simply an uninformed opinion given by people who haven't actually played his music. Everything he composed is indispensable and precious. I put him next to Carter, Ligeti, Messiaen, Webern and other great composers of our time.
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