Pierre Boulez, the living legend of modern music, as composer, conductor, teacher, provacateur, turns 80 this year. His recording label (DG) is issuing a number of new recordings to celebrate Boulez’s anniversary. One of these new recordings is of Boulez’s three early piano sonatas performed by the remarkable young Finnish pianist Paavali Jumppanen.

These sonatas are among the hallmarks of twentieth century music, besides being among the most difficult works for piano ever composed. Yvonne Loriod, pianist and wife of Olivier Messiaen, for whom Messiaen wrote his piano works, was the first to perform Boulez’s second sonata. Legend has it that Loriod (a formidable pianist) broke into tears when she saw the score, with its thorny rhythms and cascade of notes without any discernable (or “finger-able”) patterns. It is through sheer force of will that a musician learns this music.

Over the years pianists have become accustomed to the Boulez’s musical language, and this new recording has the fluency of a pianist playing a Mozart sonata. True, it sounds very different, but these are musical works, not just a bunch of notes thrown on the page. This is not music for everyone (There ain’t no tunes to hum here.) but for an adventure, give it a listen.

Incidentally, Pierre Boulez is a frequent guest conductor with the Cleveland Orchestra. His concerts are always worth hearing. He’ll be back the end of April and the beginning of May conducting works by Stravinsky and Boulez.

Last August I wrote here about the BBC Proms broadcast of Sir John Tavener’s The Veil of the Temple, his mammoth cycle of sung prayers, chants, readings, anthems, and ritual based at least in idea on the Orthodox prayer vigil. The “mere” 2 1/2 hour concert version has now been released by BMG on two CDs. (So far only in England, but scheduled for released in the US in March. Here is a link to the UK Amazon site with more information.) The recording itself, although presenting the shorter version, was recorded live during the first complete (seven hour!) performance at The Temple Church in London in June 2003.

This disc is currently burning up my CD player! What a remarkable work, although not for those who are expecting Mozartian clarity or Beethovenian musical development. Tavener’s m.o. is repetition, variation, elaboration–all hallmarks of his Orthodox faith. The performers, soprano Patricia Rozario, the Choir of the Temple Church and the Holst Singers are unfailing in their precision, pitch, and commitment to this monumental work. They are asked to sing some of the most complex and difficult music at the end of the seven hour cycle. That they are able to do so at all, let alone with the skill that they bring is a mark of their preparation and achievement. Stephen Layton, the conductor of the proceedings, is untiring. (As is organist James Vivian’s left foot from playing hours of pedal tones on the organ….)

I cannot recommend this disk highly enough. Buy it! Then give yourself two and a half hours to sit, with libretto in hand and listen to the whole piece from beginning to end. You will find yourself transported.

Almost fifty years ago American composer William Bolcom set out to set to music William Blake’s entire poetic collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Bolcom’s monumental work of the same title was finally finished in the early 1980s, and has become one of the most famous little-performed works in all of music. For good reason: the song cycle requires a huge orchestra with organ; ten vocal soloists (including coloratura and dramatic sopranos, and a “pop” mezzo‚Äîwritten for Bolcom’s wife, the amazing Joan Morris); two mixed choruses; children’s chorus, two harmonica soloists, and fiddle soloist.

The work was first performed in Stuttgart in 1984 and has had about a dozen performances since then. Now that wonderful recording company Naxos has issued a three-disk set of a live performance that took place at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in April 2004, under the direction of Leonard Slatkin. At last the rest of the world can hear the Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

A few words here can’t do the piece justice, but suffice it to say that the term “eclectic” is the understatement of the decade. The styles range from twelve-tone movements to reggae to blues, to Broadway-style. All to Blake’s poetry. Bolcom has found just the right music for each of the poems.

My favorite, sung by Joan Morris, is a simple and beautiful setting accompanied by low strings of “The Divine Image”.

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pary in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love
Is God, our father dear,
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is Man, His child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, turk, or jew;
Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.

Ms. Morris’s singing is heart-rending, and I admit to having tears in my eyes when I listen to this song. Perhaps because in this time of a divided nation, contested election, war, poverty, and everything else bad that is going on, we might remember, “Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell There God is dwelling too.”