More than a quarter of a century on from its premiere, Pli selon pli continues variously to perplex, tantalize and delight with its 'fold upon fold' of densely packed musical narrative and rich allusion. To judge from recent performances, Boulez himself has yet to exhaust his own interpretative responses to the work, and with luck a third recording under his direction will in time join the two that already exist. For the present, this second version provides a useful standard for comparison with the composer's latest thoughts, as well as the basis for pondering the score's many marvels and mysteries.
It would be difficult to take issue with Arnold Whittall's description of the 1981 recording as a ''sonic spectacular''. Compact Disc enhances the superb technical achievement, and additionally compresses the work into a single 68-minute span that avoids all the inconveniences of the original two-LP format. Of the performance itself one can only say that Phyllis Bryn-Julson in the taxing solo part and the members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in their various roles as soloists and tutti all breathe assurance into the music, which unfolds with spacious breadth and grandeur. My only complaint is that the Mallarme texts so central to Boulez's conception of the work are not included in the insert-notes.
Also newly transferred to CD is Domaines, one of Boulez's more instantly comprehensible creations. A child of the late 1960s, with its mobile score and dramatic use of physical space, this is a work that does not transfer comfortably to record, even in such a spirited performance as this. Nor can there be any justification for releasing a half-hour piece, even at mid-price, on a CD that might have contained twice as much music, accompanied by insert-notes that are no more accurate than those for the original 1971 LP. Followers of Boulez will do doubt regard this CD reissue as an obligatory purchase, but for the listener at large it fails to satisfy on several counts.'