This disc works best as a souvenir of the television series in which the gospel of twentieth-century music according to Pierre Boulez was proclaimed. It does not preach that gospel very effectively in its own right, and Boulez's purpose would undoubtedly be better served by the issue of the programmes on (sub-titled) video. Then a document of genuine educational value would be available.
The extended commentary in the booklet, evidently by Boulez himself, provides a characteristically incisive rationale for the works included, even though it is not very well translated for English readers. This particular passport will not grant the enquiring listener access to all aspects of twentieth-century music—far from it—but as a sampler, introducing those composers whom Boulez himself regards as particularly significant, it begins quite well. Two of Stravinsky's most radical and personal miniatures are balanced against Webern's miniscule, understated post-romanticism and the vital primitivism of Varese's efforts to escape from traditional sound-textures. The performance of the Webern is not the most subtle ever heard, and the sound verges on the antiseptic, but the individual qualities of the three composers are well realized.
What follows is much less valuable, simply because the decision to fall back on extracts sacrifices the central compositional fact of musical form to more local concerns with colour and mood. One wonders, in particular, how happy Karlheinz Stockhausen will be about having little more than six minutes (the timing in the booklet is wrong) of his Kreuzspiel included. Nor is any indication given in the booklet as to which extracts are being played. Yet the main drawback of the disc comes at the end. Even listeners able to follow Boulez's French commentary on Eclat (the one work barely mentioned in the booklet) may be disappointed that a complete performance does not follow the analysis. All in all, this is hardly likely to further that love for twentieth-century music of which Boulez speaks so eloquently in his Preface.'