Olivier Messiaen - Éclairs Sur L’Au-Delà... (2019)

A spellbinding rendering of Messiaen's final work, recorded last September in the Barbican, London.  Sir Simon Rattle starts by talking about how moving he found the work on first encounter, before leading the 128-strong LSO through the 11 movements of Messiaen's glimpse of eternity ("flashes over the beyond" is one translation of the title).

It's powerful, hallucinatory stuff, especially when the massed ranks of percussion come to the fore in the sixth section and the eighth, and just wonderously beautiful in the sections where Messiaen's trademark birdsong take the lead.  Éclairs definitely comes across as the work of a composer aware of his imminent mortality (he wouldn't live to see the premiere), but facing it down with the faith of someone who saw death as the raising of "the great curtain" that he visualised in this music.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Quatre Études De Rythme
Des Canyons Aux Étoiles
Turangalîla Symphony / Quatour Pour La Fin Du Temps (EMI recordings cond. by Rattle)
Turangalîla Symphony / L'ascension (Naxos recording cond. by Wit)
Et Exspecto Ressurrectionem (Philips recording cond. by Haitink)
Et Exspecto Resurrectionem (Erato recording cond. by Boulez), etc

Stravinsky - Agon / Schuller - 7 Studies On Themes Of Paul Klee (1966)

Been having a bit of a Stravinsky week, following a recent re-broadcast of the concert below.  But first, here's a great little record by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which features one of the composer's later works.  Agon, completed in 1957, is a single-act ballet that dates from Stravinsky's late period when he started getting into twelve-tone rows.  It still features his flair for bold rhythms, loads of wild colour in the strings and brass, and has neat little solos for mandolin.  Reminded me of orchestral Zappa more than once, and really shows Stravinsky's influence on him.

Agon is paired on this album with Seven Studies On Themes Of Paul Klee (1959) by Gunter Schuller (1925-2015).  As well as a composer, Schuller was a jazz musician, playing on one of the Birth Of The Cool sessions, and doing occasional conducting of Mingus' work; Schuller is credited with coining the term "third stream" for the confluence of jazz and classical music, even if the concept itself dated back to Gershwin's time.

Schuller's seven representations of Klee paintings in music range from dense, dramatic orchestration in Antique Harmonies and An Eerie Moment, to outright jazz stylings in Little Blue Devil, to plain weirdness - The Twittering Machine sounds like an avant-garde cut-up of a Woody Woodpecker cartoon soundtrack.  Lots of fun.

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bonus Stravinsky - conducted by Simon Rattle
 
A concert broadcast from September 2017 at the Barbican, London, in which Sir Simon Rattle took the LSO through Stravinsky's legendary breakthrough ballets Firebird, Petrushka and Rite Of Spring in a single evening.  Exhilarating stuff, expertly executed.

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Krzysztof Penderecki - Emanationen, Partita, Cello Concerto, Symphony (1995 compilation, rec. 1972/3)

Following on from last Monday's post, a further tribute to Krzysztof Pendercki after his recent death.  This compilation from the 90s, like the second of the 'previously posted' links below, pulled together the composer-conducted recordings made for EMI in the early 70s.  On this one are four of Pendercki's slightly less famous but no less engrossing and distinctive works for orchestra.

First up is Emanationen, one of Pendercki's early works composed in 1958.  Two orchestras tuned a minor second apart generate a queasy churn that hints at the extremities to come in the 1960s.  The next two works are concertante, firstly Partita for harpsichord and chamber orchestra.  This was the 1972 premiere recording with harpsichordist Felicja Blumental (it was written the previous year); the instrument's spidery rattling sits well with parts for electric guitar and bass guitar.

Cello Concerto No. 1 was originally written in 1967 as a rare feature for the five-string violino grande, and was transcribed into a cello concerto five years later.  The legendary Siegfried Palm ably takes the lead part to its dark, violent depths and screeching heights - you can imagine a young Iancu Dumitrescu taking notes.  Closing the collection is Penderecki's first Symphony, commissioned in 1972 by, of all things, an English gas-engine manufacturing company (they were involved in a series of Annual Industrial Concerts).  It aptly starts out sounding like some unearthly mechanical device sputtering into life, before going deep into atmospheric soundworlds that only Penderecki could conjure up.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
St Luke Passion, Threnody etc (Polskie Nagrania Muza recordings)
Threnody, etc (EMI recordings)
Symphony No. 2
Utrenja