John Leonard

Huzzah! A trivial task accomplished!  To wit: the discovery of the title of a piece by Boulez heard at a concert at the CSO in his honor (there was also a piece by Messiaen, though I can't remember which, and a gagaku ensemble played after the intermission, and in fact much more, though whatever else might have been performed has flown my mind).  I recall thinking that it resembled Duke Ellington's "Ad Lib on Nippon" from the Far East Suite, and am surprised, though perhaps I should not be, to find that it has been recorded.  The arrangement of different groups of players throughout the hall (they weren't merely dispersed across the stage, but were in among the audience, or where the audience would be if the concert had been better attended, in some cases—up in the mezzanine, on the main floor, all that jazz) had a much greater effect that one might have anticipated in advance, and even if the spatial dispersion could be recorded properly, it would take a pretty sophisticated sound system to reproduce it, I suspect.