BBC Proms 2022 - Hebrides Ensemble Play Xenakis, Messiaen & Ravel (Proms in Belfast, 18 July 2022)

This year's first post from the Proms actually comes from the Waterfront Hall Studio in Belfast, and is an hour-long chamber concert marking Iannis Xenakis' centenary.  To offer up something special for the occasion, the programme starts with an unpublished early piece by Xenakis: a piano fragment from 1949.  Lasting under a minute, it's nice to hear something so rare by Xenakis.  Straight afterwards, the Hebrides Ensemble dive in to the composer's late period with Akea (1986) for piano and string quartet, with the dramatic sonorities making his signature unmistakeble.  Ittidra, one of Xenakis' final works from a decade later, features ghostly, queasy strings, and the Ravel homage À R. (1987) for piano highlights his formative influences, as do the Ravel and Messiaen pieces that fill out a well-chosen programme.

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Momo Kodama - La Vallée Des Cloches (Ravel, Takemitsu & Messiaen) (2013)

Sticking with ECM and classical today for some incredible 20th century piano music, played by Osaka-born pianist Momo Kodama.  Maurice Ravel's Miroirs suite is rendered in all its tricksy, impressionistic wonder with crystal clarity, with Kodama's rendering of Une barque sur l'ocean (one of my favourite piano pieces of all time, which made me buy this album) capturing the delicacy of every lapping wave.  The other substanital work on the album is Olivier Messiaen's birdsong catalogue La Fauvette Des Jardins, evoking a garden-warbler and several other birds on a midsummer's night, and as a bridge between the two French masters Kodoma plays Rain Tree Sketch by Toru Takemitsu, chosen for its interesting similarities to the other composers.

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Ravel at SGTG:

Alborada Del Gracioso arranged for marimba duo

Takemitsu at SGTG:

Asterism, Requiem, Green, The Dorian Horizon

November Steps

Messiaen 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

Éclairs Sur L’Au-Delà...

BBC Concert Orchestra / James McVinnie - Rautavaara, Glass, Pärt, Jóhannsson etc (BBC Proms 2021)

Another great Proms concert, recorded a week ago and this time pairing the BBC Concert Orchestra with organist James McVinnie.  A well-selected programme of atmospheric modern orchestral music is punctuated by a couple of fantastic solo organ pieces, then both come together in the finale.

 

Einojuhani Rautavaara's chilly soundscape Cantus Arcticus is up first, the music woven around taped birdsong captured by Rautavaara in northern Finland in the early 70s.  A brief piece by Judith Weir is next: she describes Still, Glowing as "an attempt at ambient music".  The first feature for James McVinnie is Philip Glass' Mad Rush, in its original organ version - recording by Glass here, or on piano here.  The orchestra return with Arvo Pärt's Festina Lente.

No interval in this performance, so the orchestra continue on with two pieces from the late Jóhann Jóhannsson's Orphée album, reproducing their lovely melancholy in fine style.  In between them is another solo organ spotlight, this time one of Messiaen's Méditations sur le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité.  American composer Missy Mazzoli's Holy Roller is next, taking fragments of Tallis to create "a monument to a non-existent religion", then McVinnie joins the orchestra for Canadian Samy Moussa's incredible A Globe Itself Infolding to give a memorable conclusion to the programme.

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Arvo Pärt at SGTG: Spiegel Im Spiegel, etc

Jóhann Jóhannsson at SGTG: Fordlandia / Orphée

and lots of Philip Glass.

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

Olivier Messiaen - Turangalîla Symphonie / Quatuor Pour La Fin Du Temps (1987)

This classic double-disc release from the 80s came up in the comments last time I posted Messiaen, so about time I got around to posting it.  The pairing of Turangalîla with Quartet For The End Of Time brings together two of Messiaen's most celebrated masterpieces, and this set is also essential because it sounds so great, with world-class musicians all round.

Simon Rattle's take on Turangalîla is one of typically lush attention to detail, and makes for interesting side-by-side comparison with my personal favourite rendering under Antoni Wit (see links below), where everything is a bit more in-your-face.  The ondes Martenot does blend better with the orchestra in the Rattle version, I reckon - it's played here by Tristan Murail.

After such mind-meltingly colourful music comes the stark contrast of Quatour Pour La Fin Du Temps.  Famously written and premiered in a prisoner of war camp, the four players effortlessly evoke Messiaen's sombre but spiritually hopeful apocalypse.  The cello (Siegfried Palm) and piano (Aloys Kontarsky) duet sounds particularly affecting.  More Messiaen/Rattle next week.

Disc 1 link
Disc 2 link
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Previously posted at SGTG:
Quatre Études De Rythme
Des Canyons Aux Étoiles
Turangalîla Symphony / L'ascension (Naxos recording cond. by Wit)
Et Exspecto Ressurrectionem (Philips recording cond. by Haitink)
Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum (Erato recording cond. by Boulez), etc

Toru Takemitsu - November Steps / Olivier Messiaen - Et Exspecto Resurrectionem (1970)

Staying with the loose theme of Japan for this post and Friday's, here's a great work by Toru Takemitsu.  November Steps was composed in 1967 as a commission by the New York Philharmonic, with Takemitsu working in self-imposed seclusion with only a couple of Debussy scores as a reference point.

The result was this striking 19-minute piece in which the solo instruments are shakuhachi flute and the lute-like biwa, which take part in lengthy dialogues that fully showcase their unique resonances.  In the brief orchestral passages, these sounds are echoed in the strings.  November Steps was premiered under Seiji Ozawa in November 1967; this recording by the Concertgebouw/Haitink took place two years later, and was given an inspired pairing on LP with a great version of Messiaen's hallucinatory apocalypse, Et Exspecto Resurrectionem (see links below for a different version).  A tiny bit more Takemitsu - and lots more besides - coming on Friday.

Original Japanese LP, 1970

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More Takemitsu at SGTG: Asterism/Requiem/Green/The Dorian Horizon
and Messiaen:
Quatre Études De Rythme
Des Canyons Aux Étoiles
Turangalîla Symphony / L'ascension
Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum (Erato recording cond. by Boulez), etc

Iannis Xenakis - Evryali/Herma & Olivier Messian - Quatre Études De Rythme (Yuji Takahashi, 1976)

Knotty but immensely satisfying piano acrobatics from Japanese musician, conductor and composer Yuji Takahashi (b. 1938).  He'd studied under Iannis Xenakis in the early 60s, so was well placed to tackle Xenakis' two foremost pieces for solo piano that kick off this album.

Evryali (1973) is apparently impossible to play in full, and each interpreter has to decide how much of the piece they are able to take on.  Packed with gamelan influences, "stochastic clouds" and "polyphonic arborescences", it probably takes a PhD to fully understand, but is a blast to just listen to in its typically Xenakian insanity.  This is complemented by Herma (1962), dating from Takahashi's time with Xenakis, who dedicated it to him, and is based on set operations from Boolean algebra... nope, me neither.  Still great.

Olivier Messiaen's Four Rhythmic Studies date from 1949-50, with the 'Island Of Fire' pieces at the bookends inspired by melodies from Papua New Guinea.  In between, Messiaen experiments with numerical organisations of pitch, duration & timbre, and with Gregorian neumes, in a fascinating break from his usual concerns of naturalistic and spiritual wonder.  Takahashi excels again at this beautifully odd music, and the whole album sounds as pristine as you'd expect from a digital recording from 1976.  Yep, Denon had been pioneering PCM recording onto videotape for a full five years at this point.

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Iannis Xenakis at SGTG:
Phlegra, Jalons etc
Oresteïa
Synaphaï
Persephassa
Ata, Jonchaies etc
Pléiades/Psappha
Bohor etc
Kraanerg
Terretektorh/Nomos Gamma
La Légende D'Eer
Persepolis
Olivier Messiaen at SGTG:
Des Canyons Aux Étoiles
Turangalîla Symphony / L'ascension
Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum, etc

Olivier Messiaen - Des Canyons Aux Étoiles (live at BBC Proms, 28 July 2019)

Along with the Turangalîla Symphony, Des canyons aux étoiles... (From the canyons to the stars...) is one of Olivier Messiaen's most epic orchestral works.  The creative spark was a visit to the US that Messiaen undertook in 1972, in response to a commission for music celebrating the upcoming Bicentennial.  Finding himself in Bryce Canyon, Utah, the composer was awestruck by the landscape and started work on something that would capture it in music, along with his usual religious fervour and interest in birdsong.

Des canyons aux étoiles... was the result, and the 90-minute work premiered in 1974.  This recording from just over a week ago saw the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sakari Oramo, tackle its complexity in grand style.  Pianist Nicholas Hodges is in charge of the Messiaenic aviary, with birdsong transcribed not just from American species, but from all over the world, and lengthy passages of this punctuate the powerful sweep of the orchestra.  Des Canyons also has in its score a massive percussion section, including a wind machine, thunder sheet and a geophone; the latter being a large drum of Messiaen's invention, filled with lead pellets.  Listen and be blown away. (P.S. be sure to listen on headphones to get the benefit of the binaural mix.)

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Olivier Messiaen - Turangalîla Symphony / L'ascension (rec. 1998, rel. 2000)

Probably Olivier Messiaen's most famous orchestral work, the Turangalîla-Symphonie was completed in 1948 and has been recorded dozens of times since.  This 1998 version remains my favourite, probably because it's so well recorded and allows close investigation of all the crazy elements that make up Messiaen's mindblowing 'love song to life' (one of the possible translations of the Sanskrit turanga lîla).

The symphony is one of the best known outings for the ondes Martenot, that ghostly sounding proto-synthesizer invented in the late 1920s.  Played here by rare instrument specialist Robert Bloch, the theremin-like sweeps of the ondes first make their presence felt in the second section, or first Chant d'amour.  It's also used as one of the main melodic instruments in the Joie du sang des etoiles section.

Throughout, the rest of the orchestra whirls around in great multicolour shades (Messiaen was apparently a synesthete) and four central themes weave in and out at various points.  Listening to the 80 minute work for me is like hearing an early form of psychedelia - it's a long, strange trip, but an absolutely beautiful one.  The shimmering wonder of L'ascension, four meditations for orchestra (1932-3), which fills out the second CD, has a similar effect despite being an earlier work and more rooted in Messiaen's spiritual ouevre - a different recording can be found here.

Disc 1 link
Disc 2 link

Olivier Messiaen - Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum, etc (1988 compi, rec '66-'71)

Been trying to up my Messiaen (1908-1992) game lately, and found this great CD for £2.  Apparently it’s from a box set that was released in the composer’s 80th birthday year – love that digital timing on the cover, from the early heyday of the format! 

Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum (And I await the resurrection of the dead) from 1964 is the centrepiece here, and it’s one of Messiaen’s most striking and sombre orchestral works, being commissioned in memoriam of the dead of the World Wars.  Whether with ominous tolling bells and rattling percussion, or in the huge monolithic brass lines, approaching something like orchestral doom-metal, this is pure apocalypse and final judgement written large.  It’s paired on CD as it was on the 1966 LP with Couleurs De La Cité Céleste (1963), which is even more percussive, makes much of Messiaen’s concept of colours in sound, and an ideal companion to the main work.  Both were conducted by Pierre Boulez.

Slightly lighter in mood, and dating from 1934 (recorded here in 1971), L’Ascension is one of Messiaen’s earliest orchestral masterpieces to show the mystical, hallucinatory Catholicism at the heart of most of his output.  The final movement is something that’s particularly stuck on me since getting into the work; it truly is otherworldly.

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