Event is Live
Carnegie Hall Presents

Ensemble intercontemporain

Saturday, March 25, 2023 7:30 PM Zankel Hall
Matthias Pintscher by Franck Ferville
Founded by Pierre Boulez in 1976, the prolific Ensemble intercontemporain is an endlessly versatile group comprising 31 soloists. This top contemporary music ensemble has amassed a repertoire of more than 3,000 modern works and counting. “Music has always been new at its time,” said Music Director and Conductor Matthias Pintscher following the group’s 2022 Polar Music Prize win. “Every listener is equally qualified.” This evening’s program is a tribute to the group’s iconic founder, and features a New York premiere by Pintscher, Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, and Boulez’s Dérive 2.

Performers

Ensemble intercontemporain
Matthias Pintscher, Music Director and Conductor

Program

SCHOENBERG Five Pieces, Op. 16 (arranged for chamber ensemble by Schoenberg)

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER sonic eclipse (NY Premiere)

BOULEZ Dérive 2

Event Duration

The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission.

Listen to Selected Works

At a Glance

This concert presents a daring work from the beginning of the atonal revolution and two compelling nontonal pieces from the avant-garde in our own time. Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra—heard here in a transcription for chamber ensemble—is explosive, compact, and dream-like, packing a world of emotion into five short sections and paving the way for the innovations of the New Viennese School. More expansive is Boulez’s Dérive 2, a hypnotic work combining recurrence with endless variety, as ideas and colors layer in intricate counterpoint over a single sonority. Boulez called the technique “narrative mosaic,” in which the music is constantly moving while seeming to stand still. Matthias Pintscher’s sonic eclipse explores the sonorities of two solo instruments, trumpet and horn, and it too involves layering. As the composer explains, the different sounds and colors of the two instruments are “gradually drawn together and made to overlap, ultimately involving the entire ensemble; the result is everything’s being melded into one voice, one instrument and one sonic gesture—which thereafter proceeds to fall back apart. In a metaphorical sense, this is precisely what happens in an eclipse.”

Bios

Ensemble intercontemporain

Founded in 1976 by Pierre Boulez with the support of Michel Guy (then France’s Minister of Culture) and the collaboration of Nicholas Snowman, Ensemble intercontemporain is dedicated ...

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Matthias Pintscher

The 2022–2023 season is Matthias Pintscher’s final season as music director of Ensemble intercontemporain (EIC). In his decade-long artistic leadership of EIC, he cultivated new  ...

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Jean-Christophe Vervoitte

Jean-Christophe Vervoitte studied horn with Georges Barboteu and chamber music with Maurice Bourgue at the Conservatoire de Paris. During his instrumental training, he studied harmony and ...

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Clément Saunier

Clément Saunier studied under Clément Garrec and Jens McManama at the Conservatoire de Paris, where he won first prizes in trumpet and chamber music. His performances have ...

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