Pierre Boulez Workshop

The audience at the Donaueschingen Music Festival in October 1958 was treated to a spectacular piece of music. In Poésie pour pouvoir, Pierre Boulez combined instrumental and electronic sounds for the first time and allowed them to rotate in space — with three orchestral groups placed on platforms and 70 loudspeakers distributed around the auditorium. A short time later, however, Boulez withdrew the work. He considered the orchestral parts to be complete and valid, but the technical possibilities of the time and thus the tape part did not meet his standards. It was only with the founding of the Institut de recherche et coordination acoustique/musique (IRCAM) in Paris and his masterpiece Répons, which is also on the program this summer, that he was able to realize his vision of electronic-instrumental spatial music. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Pierre Boulez’s birth, the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) offers us a re-encounter with Poésie pour pouvoir: in addition to the live performance with a new tape reconstruction by composer-in-residence Marco Stroppa, the workshop concert also features a recording of the piece’s Donaueschingen premiere.