His contemporaries knew Pierre Boulez as a man of strong convictions with a sharp tongue. As a young composer, he once told the musicologist Heinrich Strobel that the only thing he had in common with Mozart were the letters O and Z in his last name—yet in his later years, he included a number of Mozart’s works in his repertoire as a conductor, among them the B-major Wind Serenade known as “Gran Partita.” Daniel Barenboim and the Boulez Ensemble juxtapose this landmark score with Boulez’s own sur Incises, an intensely emotional large-scale work for three pianos, three harps, and three percussionists.

Daniel Barenboim had to cancel his appearance in this concert due to a flu infection. We would like to thank Michael Wendeberg for stepping in at short notice to conduct the performance. As the former pianist of the Ensemble intercontemporain and professor for piano and performance practice at the Barenboim-Said Akademie, he is closely associated both with this institution and the work of Pierre Boulez.