In March 1969 Pierre Boulez — then 43 — made his New York Philharmonic debut conducting a month of concerts. The engagement, which included a much-discussed performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, quickly resolved the question of who would succeed Leonard Bernstein as Music Director. A mere three months later came the announcement officially appointing Boulez to the post.
The French composer-conductor’s six-year tenure, which began in the 1971–72 season, would bring a radically different perspective to the storied orchestra. The Boulez era challenged conventional thinking around the selection of repertoire and introduced innovative approaches to capture new audiences. In the process, it anticipated fundamental questions of purpose and identity that the performing arts are confronting today.
By the 1970s Boulez had already come to represent the epitome of “modern music” in the public mind, through his own compositions and also through his prominence as a conductor, as well as through his efforts as a teacher and his prolific, influential writing. He had burst on the scene as an artist and thought leader following World War II, representing a wave of revolutionary European composers determined to advance music into unprecedented territory by severing all vestiges of tradition.
That formidable reputation also made Boulez an extremely polarizing figure — a factor that was considerably amplified by his own penchant for feistily polemical statements denouncing the status quo (such as his notorious suggestion in 1967 to break free of stagnation by “blow[ing] the opera houses up”).
Management had to navigate an “image problem,” according to Gabryel Smith, the NY Phil’s Director, Archives and Exhibits. “People were afraid that this prickly modern composer was going to steamroll over the subscription season with his own music and John Cage and the like — which was not the case.” Then Philharmonic President Carlos Moseley sent a letter to subscribers noting: “The ‘problematic’ music this year totals no more than 15% of the total playing time of any one series (much less on some).” In fact, despite presenting a range of modern composers who had never previously appeared on Philharmonic programs, the subscription concerts throughout Boulez’s six seasons hardly shied away from familiar fare. Jon Deak, a former New York Philharmonic Associate Principal Bass (as well as a composer and innovator, who would go on to found the NY Phil Very Young Composers Program), recalls: “Even though Pierre was very strict in his own compositions, his choice of repertoire and the composers and artists that he furthered were much more ecumenical.”
When it came to leading staples of the repertoire, Deak singles out Boulez’s astonishing gift for getting the right sound from the players: “He brought an accuracy and a pinpoint precision to the orchestra that I have rarely seen before or since. For Ravel’s depiction of dawn in Daphnis et Chloé, for example, he drew a clarity that was just like crystal.”
Apart from the question of repertoire, Boulez’s innovations were most apparent in two non-subscription series. Rug Concerts, which started in 1973, imaginatively combined classical pieces with 20th-century works. This coming January, the month of Boulez’s 100th birthday, the NY Phil will revisit one of the programs he curated (and conducted) on the series. Even more, back in the 1970s the orchestra-level audience seats were removed, replaced with red rugs and cushions to encourage an informal atmosphere, and seating behind the orchestra enhanced the sense of a closer connection between musicians and audience. The Orchestra itself was placed more centrally in the hall — prefiguring the changes that would become permanent when the transformed David Geffen Hall opened in 2022.
Another initiative was The Prospective Encounters, which combined performance with lectures and discussions, focused exclusively on contemporary composers, and featured smaller, chamber formations in downtown venues (such as the old Cooper Union). Both initiatives, which were especially directed at younger audiences, looked ahead to the innovations in concert format and collaborations with other cultural organizations that the New York Philharmonic has been exploring in recent years.
Summing up his overall philosophical perspective on inevitable change, Boulez wrote: “Rather than allow [cultural evolution] to take its course as passive spectators, oblivious or unobservant, we should play a conscious role.”
The NY Phil is celebrating the legacy of its late Music Director both onstage and off.
A Musical Lineage: Schoenberg and Boulez, October 9
Co-Presented with Juilliard, at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater;
Sound On: Reprising a Rug Concert, January 25
David Robertson, conductor; Jana McIntyre, soprano (NY Phil debut)
Works by J.S. Bach, Schubert, Webern, and Stravinsky, as well as Boulez
Beyond the stage, NY Phil audiences can look back on his NY Phil tenure in the season-spanning exhibition in the Bruno Walter Gallery on David Geffen Hall’s Leon and Norma Hess Grand Promenade. Visit NYPhil.org.
Thomas May is a writer, critic, educator, and translator whose work appears in such publications as The New York Times, Gramophone, and The Strad.
