Complete Webern
Pierre Boulez'sComplete Webern Editionappears just  over two decades afterhis  last traversal. Well, it's not literally complete, but does have  enough early works to set the mature ones in the right context. These  days, Webern is no longer seen so much as a new music guru as he is a  major composer, pure and simple--his expression as concise as it is  intense. Performancewise, there's a quality of musicianship here that  few previous recordings have matched; familiarity with the idiom  certainly plays its part, but so does Boulez's belief that what we're  hearing needs to be presented with conviction. Try the Passacaglia,  sensuous music that combines the soundworld of Brahms and Mahler, or  the string quartet or orchestra pieces--miniatures in duration, but  whole dramas of expression.Ease of performance doesn't always make  this music easy to come to grips with: the song cycles need several  listenings to grasp the meaning behind the compression, while the later  instrumental and choral works have a luminous austerity that looks back  to Bach and beyond to Renaissance masters such as Schütz and  Isaac. While much of Webern's music has long been admired, only now is  it becoming possible to respond to it through the heart as well as the  brain. This set, superbly packaged and comprehensively documented,  marks a major step forward, and deserves investigating by anyone keen  to appreciate something of the music's quiet, calm essence in an often  strident, dislocated century.--Richard Whitehouse