Copland said of his famous teacher, “She knew the oldest and the latest music, pre-Bach and post-Stravinsky, and knew it cold.”
Even as a performer, Boulanger was driven by the urge to educate, and her concert and recital programs offered unorthodox history lessons through bold juxtapositions of old and new. Whether in Polignac’s salon or the concert hall, her soulful interpretations of Bach cantatas and Monteverdi madrigals typically shared the program with cutting-edge new music by Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith and others, selected and ordered to highlight compatible key and tempo relationships, as well as their more obvious differences.
Program Eight draws inspiration from Boulanger’s groundbreaking approach to programming through recreations of some of her own idiosyncratic yet inspired groupings.
Read the Program
