Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review
(10 customer reviews) 31 of 33 people found the following review helpful
transcendent musical beauty,
May 22, 2002 Ian K. Hughes (San Mateo, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Dutilleux: Complete Orchestral Works (Audio CD)
There is an unfinished quality to much contemporary classical music. For some composers, their pieces are studies for larger works ( ever in progress ), others revel in a fragmented brilliance, an apparently purposeful lack of purpose. Amidst these ( variously valuable ) diversions, there exist creators working in what I term the "authentic" classical tradition, striving for artistic achievement that lasts beyond the confines of the zeitgeist. These individualists operate in an aesthetic mode set apart from both the hidebound rules of nostalgic conservatism and the perpetual fragmentation of avant-garde radicalism. Henri Dutilleux ( born 1916 ) certainly is an individualistic composer.Given the sensual, quasi-exotic beauty of his music, is it natural to link Dutilleux with the great French "impressionists". Music critics have for years mentioned a connection with Ravel but aside from perfection of craftsmanship, a much more convincing link can be made to the mysterious...Read more
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Music for a Starry Night,
February 26, 2003 Thomas F. Bertonneau (Oswego, NY United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Dutilleux: Complete Orchestral Works (Audio CD)
The reason to buy this boxed set is not to acquire new, definitive interpretations of much represented music; it is to become acquainted with a composer who has had no prior integral recording. That is justification enough. The music of Henri Dutilleux (born 1916) manages to be unmistakably "modern" without being the slightest bit doctrinaire or off-putting: Dutilleux's roots go down deeply into the impressionist soil of Claude Debussy, although unlike Debussy, Dutilleux shows an interest in polyphonic complexity rather than in chord-based harmonic color as such. In addition, Dutilleux's structures usually correspond to what one can call "the symphonic" in a way that Debussy rarely essayed: and indeed his first two orchestral scores were symphonies (1951 and 1959). Like many composers in the aftermath of World War Two who refused to embrace the procedures of the "Second Viennese School," Dutilleux found himself somewhat marginalized. While Dutilleux received performances and...Read more
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
France's Eminence gris,
August 26, 2002 Christopher Forbes "weirdears" (Brooklyn,, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Dutilleux: Complete Orchestral Works (Audio CD)
With the death of Messiaen a few years ago, France has only Dutilleux and Boulez as it's remaining grey eminences musically. Of the two, Dutilleaux is the less well known, partly because he has been hardly prolific (he is a merciless critic of his own work) and because Boulez has a greater genius for self-promotion.This complete collection should go a long way to securing Dutilleux's reputation as one of the finest French composers of the last half of the 20th century. This CD is a collectin of all of the orchestral works by Dutilleux. they span his entire career, from the 1st symphony of 1951 to The Shadows of Time, from 1997. Not all of the works on the disc are masterpieces, but many are, including the marvelous Cello concerto from 1970, Tout un monde lontain, the Violin concerto and the Shadows of Time. Dutilleux's world is a mix of shadow and light, neither atonal nor tonal. He has the same interest in sonority as Messiaen, but is more traditional and craftsmanlike. The music...Read more
