Tombeau II. Hommage à Pierre Boulez

[This piece] is intended as an ‘homage’ to Boulez but also refers to the principle of musical metamorphosis, the reworking for a different line-up of instrumental forces, just as Boulez did with some of his Notations piano pieces. I was asked to look at Boulez's Notations IX, entitled Lontain-Calme, a piano piece which was not orchestrated by Boulez.
I am referring to a statement by Boulez in which he questions the orchestration of his short piano pieces for large orchestral forces. He said that there is more or less a relationship between the length of a piece and the size of the orchestra. The pieces would be far too short for a large orchestra. For this reason, I left the original of Notations IX largely untouched as the basis for my Tombeau, but stretched Boulez’s musical score by a certain factor in terms of time. The stretched piano piece served as a seed to grow, thanks to the possibilities of the orchestral apparatus, through augmentation of the rhythmic and figurative elements to almost sustained notes, thus creating a kind of layering - an echo of the original work.
As a further approach, I wanted to point out with this orchestral work that Boulez intensively explored Richard Wagner’s music when he conducted Der Ring des Nibelungen in 1976 in Patrice Chéreau’s production. The sensual effect of Wagner’s music often evokes a kind of delirium. And I think that impressed and influenced Boulez. So did the idea of transcending the boundaries of space and time. As it says in Parsifal: "Zum Raum wird hier die Zeit" (‘Time here becomes space’).
On the one hand Tombeau II is derived from Boulez’s original piano piece, which I’ve slowed down. And on the other the idea of a slow and huge crescendo is derived from Wagner. [...] The desired effect at the end of the piece is a huge outcry – despair or anger. You can decide ...
(excerpt from an interview with Timothy Fisher, BBC – by kind permission)