Music: Sound of the Future?

The liner notes on the new record describe the musician: "A short man growing slightly stocky, bald, Napoleonic. Smokes cigars. Can drink four framboises after dinner with no decline of intellectual focus. Never eats breakfast. Is generous with money. Could organize and run even the French government. Was a choir boy . . . Has nervous blink . . Lives near Paris' Place de la Bastille (in an old building; you expect to find J.J. Rousseau sitting in bed writing when you enter)."

The individual thus described: charming, highly gifted French Composer-Conductor-Pianist Pierre Boulez,...