{originally published as part of a series marking Deutsche Grammophon's 100th anniversary; a postscript from 2005 appears below the Q&A}

Pierre Boulez has gone from enfant terrible to elder statesman over the course of his five decades as composer, conductor and deep thinker about music. Yet even though some of the polemical zeal of youth has been tempered with time, he still relishes his role as missionary for the modern. For CBS/Sony, Erato and, for the past two decades, Deutsche Grammophon, Boulez has created a peerless baedeker to the sound of the 20th century, covering precursors Wagner and Mahler; and on to Schoenberg, Berg and Webern; Stravinsky and Bartók; Debussy, Ravel and Messiaen; Ligeti, Birtwistle and, of course, Boulez.

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