Oliver Knussen
Two Organa für großes Ensemble, op. 27

George Benjamin
Three Inventions for Chamber Orchestra

INTERMISSION

Pierre Boulez
... explosante-fixe ... für drei Flöten, Ensemble und Live-Elektronik

During Pierre Boulez’s tenure as music director of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the early 1970s, the BBC produced a series of TV documentaries that intro­duced the young George Benjamin to the music of composers such as Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Varèse, and Ives. Not long afterward, while still a teenager, he began his composition studies with Boulez’s former teacher Olivier Messiaen. Now one of the foremost musicians of our time, Benjamin closes the Pierre Boulez Saal season, appearing in multiple artistic capacities. Leading the Boulez Ensemble, he conducts Boulez’s …explosante-fixe… of 1993 in addition to his own Three Inventions and Oliver Knussen’s Two Organa, written in 1995.