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BOESMANS Philippe (°1936)

Philippe BOESMANS was born in Tongeren (Belgium) in 1936. After he studied piano at the Conservatoire de Liège, he chose for a composer’s career. Initially greatly influenced by serialism, he soon felt it necessary to break beyond its constraints and exclusions. Never dismissing this recent heritage, he nonetheless developed a profoundly personal musical language, at the very centre of which lay meaningful communication with its audience. Boesmans’ career has been a prestigious one. In 1971 he received the Italia prize for Upon La-Mi, and he has consis- tently participated at important contemporary music festivals (those of Darmstadt, Royan, Zagreb, Avignon, Almeida, Strasbourg, Montreal, Ars Musica, Salzbourg and IRCAM to name but a few) as well as recording extensively. His Concerto pour violon and Conversions CDs won no less than six prizes, including the Koussevitzky International Recording Prize and the Charles Cros Academy award. Based in Brussels, he also took up the post of producer at the television company RTBF in 1971, going on to become the composer in residence at the Monnaie, where Gerard Mortier commissioned several of his works, including La Passion de Gilles (1983), the Trakl-Lieder (1987) and his 1989 orchestration of L’Incoronazione di Poppea de Monteverdi. His relationship with the Monnaie continued to be a fruitful one, Bernard Foccroulle commissioning in 1993 a new opera, Reigen, staged by its writer Luc Bondy, who adapted the piece from the Schnitzler opus of the same name. That same year, the production toured to Strasbourg, continuing on to the Monnaie and the Theatre du Châtelet in 1994, and the Frankfurt Opera in 1995. Reigen continued to be staged throughout the Nineties, for instance at the Nantes Opera (1997), the Wiener Opern Theatre (1997), in Braunschweig (1998) and Amsterdam (1999). In 2004, a new version of the piece, adapted for chamber orchestra, was commissioned from Fabrizio Cassol by the Rhine National Opera, and staged by the Rhine Atelier at the Colmar Municipal Theatre that May. Further performances were scheduled in Mulhouse, Paris, Strasbourg and Lausanne. There will be a production from Opera Studio Nederland in September and October 2007. In further collaboration with Luc Bondy, Boesmans created Wintermärchen for the Monnaie in 1999. This production too proved highly successful, being performed the following year at the Lyon Opera, Châtelet, and at the Barcelona Liceo in 2004. Further performances were planned for Braunschweig, Vienna and Nuremberg. The one-act opera Julie (Cypres - CYP4626) was also rerun twice in 2005, for the Wiener Festwochen in May, and for the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in July. Boesmans continues to receive recognition for his work, being awarded the Arthur Honegger Prize in December 2000, and the SACD Music Prize in May 2004. Other recent works include the 1991 Daydreams for marimba; Love and Dance Tunes, based on Shakespearean sonnets and arranged for baritone and piano (1993, 1995); Dreamtime (a 1994 arrangement for harp, tuba solo and instrumental ensemble); the string quartet Summer Dreams (1994); and Smiles, a percussive duet created in March 1995 for the Ars Musica Festival. 1996 saw the commissioning by the Ensemble InterContemporain of Ornamented Zone, an arrangement for clarinet, alto, violin and piano, Philippe Boesmans is composing a new opera Yvonne after ‘Yvonne, Princesse de Bourgogne’ from Witold Gombrowicz. The creation of this opera was programmed in 2009 at the Opéra de Paris.

Discography on Cypres

Yvonne, Princesse de Bourgogne (Ref.: CYP4632)
Yvonne is the final chapter of a quartet of contemporary operas, the fruit of the long term collaboration between Belgian composer Philippe Boesmans and Swiss dramaturg and director Luc Bondy.
» more info... |

Philippe Boesmans | Complete piano works | Surfing (Ref.: CYP4629)
There is something of game-play in the style of Philippe Boesmans. The Belgian composer likes to create illusion, play the trouble-maker, toss out musical snares, even use a technical difficulty to create a new world, a novel idea.
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Susan Chilcott in Brussels (Ref.: CYP8601)
Susan Chilcott was born in 1964. Her career really took of in 1993, but she sadly died from cancer, ten years later, in 2003. Those ten years were enough to build her legend, the legend of a singer that “embodied the deepest emotional expression through her voice and her unique stage presence”, to quote Antonio Pappano.
» more info... |

Philippe Boesmans, Julie (Ref.: CYP4626)
Five years after the huge success of Wintermärchen, Philippe Boesmans returns with his fourth opera, Julie. An intimate work, an in camera drama of tortuous human relationships. Thanks to three superb singers, a chamber orchestra and an extraordinary conductor, Julie is perhaps "the finest opera score Boesmans has so far written" (De Morgen).
» more info... |

Philippe Boesmans | Violin Concerto & Piano Concerto (Ref.: CYP7604)
Richard Piéta violin - Marcelle Mercenier piano - Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège - Pierre Bartholomée conductor (CD - 1998)
» more info... |

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