Pierre Boulez completed Sur Incises in 1998. It is scored for three pianos, three harps, and three percussionists. The composer chose to divide the work into Moment I and Moment II, which add up to a total of 37 minutes in duration. Based on an earlier work for solo piano, entitled Incises, Sur Incises spins out in directions in a new and arresting manner that is bristling with energy, exploding the context of the original piece. Originally, the idea was to write a sort of piano concerto, but the composer could not find instruments to match that instrument's speed for certain types of melody. What he ended up writing was a testament to the nature of the instrument instead. The piano as an instrument generates its sound though a complex operation, and Sur Incises seems to deconstruct that sound and reassemble it so that all the components of its system of aural delivery are laid bare for the listener. Everything about the piano's sound quality is amplified; the harp brings the piano's strings into the foreground, while the percussion brings out the soundboard and the attack of the player's hands upon the keyboard. The composer is revealing fresh ideas here, in his fifth decade of professional composing. Sur Incises careens into uncharted territories of monochrome color. It is dense yet fluid, majestic yet immediate. Some moments will remind alert listeners of Boulez's Le Marteau sans maître of the 1950s, but no rehashing of old ideas is detectable. There is a similar correlation with his work Derive from the 1980s. The manner in which ideas spin out of the fabric of Sur Incises is comparable. However, it is the way the composer has built on the discoveries of these works that stands out. With each new composition, he has continued to build his vocabulary. Previously unheard nuances assert themselves in Sur Incises. When one of the pianos performs a solo line, it reveals itself as the core of the work's sound. The full ensemble sounds like one enormous instrument, to which the piano is the primary component. Yet it is also a many-headed hydra, often featuring several voices churning out melody in compelling counterpoint. There are cadenzas that will challenge versatile performers, adding an edge of rawness to a soundscape of otherwise fiery and organic elegance.

This work was dedicated to Paul Sacher on his 90th birthday. Sacher was a friend of the composer and a generous sponsor of avant-garde music throughout the bulk of the second half of the twentieth century. His institute in Basil, Switzerland holds the score sketches from many great works, including those of Boulez, Webern, and others.

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