Repons, Diologue De L'ombre Double: Boulez / Ens.intercontemporain

The recording of 'Repons' on this album received the 2000 Grammy Award for "Best Classical Contemporary Composition."
This eagerly awaited disc does not make for easy listening, yet it presents a fascinating musical experience which is not inaccessible. Both 'Repons' and 'Dialogue de l'ombre double' are for live instrumentalists with electronic sound. For 'Repons' a chamber orchestra is placed in the center of the hall, surrounded by the audience. Six loudspeakers are placed around the outside of the hall behind the audience, and six soloists are interspersed among the speakers. The orchestra's sound is "live," and the soloists' sound is heard both live and electronically manipulated.
'Dialogue de l'ombre double' uses a similar layout of six speakers, but a single instrumentalist. The lone clarinet soloist is spotlighted on the stage, and the rest of the hall is in darkness. The "double shadow" of the title is a pre-recorded tape of the same soloist which is "spatialized" among the loudspeakers which surround the audience.
Although it may seem strange to call such music beautiful, the results are just that. Boulez and his sonic engineers at IRCAM have developed a computer program that allows the six-speaker layout and spatial aspects of these works to be translated to provide a satisfying analogue of the same experience on a regular stereo system.