Pierre Boulez used to be the stormy petrel of contemporary music. As a youthful radical, he booed Stravinsky for what he viewed as a failure of nerve; he has called for the demolition of the world's opera houses and denounced institutions like Lincoln Center as cultural supermarkets. Later, as conductor of both the New York Philharmonic and London's BBC Symphony Orchestra, he discomfited audiences by aggressively championing difficult new music. Ten years ago he stood the staid Wagner shrine of Bayreuth on its ear with a daring production of The Ring of the Nibelung.
In 1976 he took over officially as...
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