Jean-Henri-Alphonse Barraqué (January 17, 1928 – August 17, 1973) was a French composer and writer on music who developed an individual form of serialism which is displayed in a small output of highly complex but passionate works.
Barraqué was born in Puteaux, Hauts-de-Seine. The family moved to Paris in 1931. He studied in Paris with Jean Langlais and Olivier Messiaen and, through Messiaen, became interested in serialism. After completing his Piano Sonata in 1952, he suppressed or destroyed his earlier works. A book published by the French music critic André Hodeir, titled Since Debussy, created controversy around Barraqué by claiming this work as perhaps the finest piano sonata since Beethoven. As the work had still not been publicly performed, and only two other works by him had at this time, the extravagant claims made for Barraqué in this book were received with some scepticism. Whilst with hindsight it is clear that Hodeir had accurately perceived the exceptional features of Barraqué's music—notably its searing Romantic intensity, which distinguishes it from the contemporaneous works of Boulez or Stockhausen.
Roger Woodward AC OBE (born 20 December 1942) is an Australian classical concert pianist.
Roger Woodward was born in 1942 in Chatswood, a suburb of Sydney, the youngest of four children to Gladys and Frank Woodward. He studied church music with Kenneth Long in Sydney, and, at the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music, conducting with Sir Eugene Goossens, piano with Alexander Sverjensky and composition with Raymond Hanson. He won the piano section of the 1964 ABC Instrumental and Vocal Competition, beating David Helfgott in the final.
In 1965 he continued his studies in Poland with Zbigniew Drzewiecki. He made his debut with the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra and later with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. He rose to international prominence in a series of collaborations with Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Jean Barraqué, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Toru Takemitsu, Franco Donatoni, Luciano Berio, Leo Brouwer, Iannis Xenakis, Arvo Pärt, James Dillon and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Sviatoslav Richter invited him to appear at many European festivals; he has performed at over 100 festivals around the world, including nine appearances at the London Proms.
Marc Ponthus is a notable French pianist of modern and contemporary music, educated in Paris and currently living in New York City.
Uncompromising in artistic standards, Ponthus is among the few promoters and interpreters of avant-garde piano music. He has specialized in complex contemporary music for the piano, particularly in the piano repertoire of the Darmstadt School from the 1950s and 1960s, notably the Klavierstucken of K. Stockhausen and the Piano Sonatas of P. Boulez. An advocate of advanced music from the second half of the twentieth-century, Ponthus has also performed Beethoven's Hammerklavier at Columbia University's Miller Theater. He has also given the world premiere of Webern's unpublished, Kinderstuck in New York City at the Pierpont Morgan Library. In 2004, he recorded the complete piano music of Iannis Xenakis for Neuma Records. Back in 1977, he was prized at the V Paloma O'Shea International Piano Competition.
A recipient of the Tanne Foundation's Award for achievement in the arts, in addition to his work as a pianist, Ponthus is the director of the Mannes College of Music's Institute and Festival for Contemporary Performance, which he founded.