Pierre Boulez is alive!?

He is the last surviving avant-gardist, and it will not have escaped new-music lovers that he turned 90 on Thursday, 26 March. I mean, of course, Pierre Boulez, the composer and conductor who once pronounced Schoenberg dead and suggested that perhaps opera houses should be blown up because of their moldy programming. The same man then tirelessly broke a lance for the music of Arnold Schoenberg and even Richard Wagner, whose complete Ring des Nibelungen he performed at the Wagner Bastion Bayreuth. An iconic figure, in short. But is he still "alive"?

On the one hand, yes: national newspapers devoted large articles to the 90th birthday of the idiosyncratic modernist. Two concerts dedicated to him at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ last week attracted pretty full houses and the performance of his large-scale Répons in the upcoming Holland Festival was sold out in no time. Etty Mulder, former professor of musicology at Radboud University, presented her new book The fertile land, named after an article by Boulez on the relationship between his music and the work of painter Paul Klee.

On the other hand, no: the Pierre Boulez Foundation set up by Etty Mulder and Marius Flothuis only got a meagre audience for a concert in Nijmegen, and the festival Dag in de Branding, dedicated to Boulez, with concerts by the Asko|Schönberg and the Residentie Orkest, also attracted only about 250 visitors. - Even though the latter was conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw, showpiece of the Royal Conservatoire. The symposium on Boulez there on Sunday 29 March did not require extra seats either. Significantly, Boulez's music is conspicuous by its absence from the programmes of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the NTR Saturday matinee this season.

His star seems to have been fading somewhat for years. Back in 2002, when I asked composers for their opinions for the Asko|Schönberg's newsletter, only the older guard (Reinbert de Leeuw, Oliver Knussen) appeared to speak of Boulez with real appreciation. Younger composers like Yannis Kyriakides and Merlijn Twaalfhoven frankly admitted that for them he was little more than 'a man out of a book', who mainly composed difficult music that was too strictly structured for their taste.

But lo and behold: on his brand new CD Dialogues recorder player Erik Bosgraaf presents his own adaptation of Boulez' Dialogue de l'ombre double. He originally wrote it for clarinet and a taped 'shadow clarinet', but gave Bosgraaf permission to rework it for his own instrument. When the latter played his version in 2011, the maître was immediately enthusiastic, as the recorder's sound is much closer to that of the Asian rain song that once inspired him than the clarinet.

Dialogue de l'ombre double has a theatrical component, as the soloist conducts a dialogue with music - played by himself - on tape. While playing, he walks from music stand to music stand, while the sound of the recorded fragments comes out of six different speakers. The piece begins and ends with a tape recording. Bosgraaf in the CD booklet: 'So the player enters the room and begins not play. That works so strongly. The way the play plays a game with the audience's expectations is so intelligent and intuitive that it makes me envious.'

The theatrical element is missing on the CD, but you can easily imagine Boulez being pleased with Erik Bosgraaf's version. Not only does he have a great technique, but right through the difficult notes you can hear an enormous joy in playing. The unrestrained, lightning-fast virtuoso runs jumping between registers seem like one big jubilation to life. They are performed by Bosgraaf with such dedication and apparent ease that as a listener you are irrevocably carried away. The almost lusty sound world he conjures up is best described by the French term jouissance. So sensual and seductive I heard Dialogue de l'ombre double never before. [Tweet "Erik Bosgraaf in Dialogue de l'ombre double by Boulez: sensual and seductive "]

Bosgraaf is again just a little younger than Kyriakides and Twaalfhoven, so perhaps we can cautiously conclude: Boulez lives!