BBC Proms 2025: Berio: Sequenza V, Recital I (for Cathy); Boulez: Dialogue de l’ombre double (Ounissi / Comte / Aristidou / IRCAM / Ensemble Intercontemporain / Bleuse)

23rd July 2025
Royal Albert Hall, London, United Kingdom

BERIO Sequenza V
BOULEZ Dialogue de l’ombre double
BERIO Recital I (for Cathy)

Lucas Ounissi (trombone)
Jérôme Comte (clarinet)
Sarah Aristidou (soprano)
IRCAM (live electronics)
Ensemble Intercontemporain
Pierre Bleuse (conductor)



2025 is the centenary of the births of Berio and Boulez, and no celebration is complete without a performance by Boulez's babies for contemporary music, IRCAM and the Ensemble Intercontemporain. This was a genius programme if you know the works. The common theme of the programme is the "tragicomedy", a term which is now synonymous with "Waiting for Godot" (and of course Beckett was extensively quoted in "Sinfonia"). By continuously contrasting extreme absurdity against the tragic reality, these works lay bare the predicaments of the world and force the audience to ask all the big questions - Why are we here? What do these mean? The concert opener "Sequenza V" for solo trombone (Lucas Ounissi) by Berio, which calls for numerous extended techniques, is a memorial for a clown and it immediately set the tone for the evening - a dead clown, is it funny anymore? Boulez's "Dialogue de l'ombre double" was written for Berio's 60th birthday. As the name suggests, it is a dialogue between a live-performed solo clarinet (Jérôme Comte) and pre-recorded material realised in real-time spatially by IRCAM technicians - Which one is real? Which one is the shadow? The main event was Berio's rarely performed "Recital I (for Cathy)", which is a stage work that takes tragicomedy to the extreme. The soprano (Sarah Aristidou) started off comically looking for her pianist (Sébastien Vichard) and singing excerpts from Monteverdi, then turning to monologues asking existential questions and singing a collage (a Berio hallmark) of opera excerpts from Rossini to Schoenberg before descending into madness with quotes from "Hamlet" and "Pierrot lunaire". EIC's virtuosity hardly needs special praises, and together with their new director Pierre Bleuse (and his magnificent facial hair), they totally embraced the absurdity of the work. Whilst none of these works are legitimately contemporary anymore, it's even more relevant in the post-truth and AI-driven 2025. It made me nostalgic of the times when these masters were alive, but I am glad new talents are keeping "the spirit of irreverence" (Boulez's words) going. One of the most profound Proms I have ever been to.