When you start your career as a French composer in the mid-twentieth century by openly dismissing Pierre Boulez and writing works that don’t contain a hint of serialism, you’re probably asking for a good swift kick from the establishment. Henri Dutilleux absorbed plenty of them, but somehow, he and his music refused to go away. “His oeuvre vies with that of Boulez to be the most accomplished body of French music in recent years, and yet is relatively neglected because of the 70-year-old [sic] Boulez’s greater clangour. But, like Elliott Carter, the 96-year-old US composer, Dutilleux is one of the indomitable forces of music, carrying on writing after all these years.”