April 24, 2015

  • Messiaen: Exploring Canyons and Stars

    Messiaen: Des canyons aux etoiles
    Tzimon Barto, piano. John Ryan, horn. Andrew Barclay, xylorimba. Erika Ohman, glockenspiel.
    London Philharmonic Orchestra/Christoph Eschenbach
    LPO-0083
    Disc One—Total Time:  50:49
    Disc Two—Total Time:  49:17
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    The music of Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) is always something to experience.  Perhaps best known for his Turangalila Symphony (1949), his work may sometimes seem daunting, but the intriguing orchestrations and mystical aspects usually create an often engaging listening experience.  Nowhere is this more the case than in the sprawling Des canyons aux etoiles.  The piece was commissioned by Alice Tully in 1970 for the US bicentenary. It would lead to the composer’s inspirational response to the beauty of American vistas.  Primarily, the piece takes its inspiration from Messiaen’s trip to Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah.  Inspired by the awesome landscape and natural beauty of the Earth and sky, he would somehow bring together the vistas into both a physical and spiritual interpretation that resulted in this twelve-movement work.  The piece was premiered in New York in 1974 and the following year in both Paris (Marius Constant conducting) and London (Pierre Boulez conducting).  The present recording was made during the November 2, 2013 performance at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, as part of The Rest is Noise festival.

    Messiaen often explored birdsong in his compositions and this becomes some of the musical source material for several movements.  The work is broken into three parts with the third set aside entirely on disc two.  Each section moves us from the realm of the land to the stars and then beyond into the ethereal and religious spirituality of the universe.    Messiaen does this by approaching the orchestration more as a chamber work on a grand orchestral scale.  There are 13 individual string lines without any doubling, and large battery of percussion, and some intriguing instruments to help create the sound of sand and wind.  Though at first the music might seem rather random, the accessible harmonic ideas, coupled with always interesting orchestral colors help draw the listener into this dramatic music.  The result is a work that is a natural, celestial, and spiritual musical  journey that bears repetition for one to begin to appreciate both Messiaen’s musical language and vision.

    The first part consists of 5 movements beginning with “The Desert.”  Here the landscape represents the wide open austerity that opens the mind to possibly experiencing something more divine, the Holy Spirit in Messiaen’s own thinking.  The wind sounds thus blur this line between nature and spirituality as a variety of skittering ideas are introduced.  Next up are the “Orioles”, transplanted a bit to this location and whose sounds are recreated.  Using the Book of Daniel as a source, the third movement (“What is Written in the Stars”), features a number of patterns and sonorities that are “numbered, weighed, and divided” in a highly-organized mystical commentary to try and connect the previous movements with a deeper meaning.  With this varied color and sounds, as well as a structurally cerebral movement of greater weight at the mid-point, the piece pauses in a way for a piano solo, “The White-browed Robin”.  The first part ends with a theological reflection on the “Gift of Awe” (“Cedar Breaks and the Gift of Awe”).  Here segments from the third movement are now also combined with the bird calls native to the region, helping bring us back to a reflection of the vistas and deep gorge in Cedar Breaks, Utah.

    A solo horn opens part two with the “Interstellar Call”.  Essentially it is a virtuosic showpiece for the instrument exploring both different techniques but also the importance of silence as a key musical effect.  There is also a quote here from Psalm 147 suggesting perhaps a time of healing and being called to a higher plane.  “Bryce Canyon and the Red-Orange Rock” is, at 15 minutes, the longest movement of the piece, and at times the more evocative.  The music features more of the bird calls, using interesting orchestral colors, especially lots of percussion, as well to build into a virtuosic work for orchestra that builds to great intensity ending on a loud major chord.

    We move out into the stars for “The Resurrected and the Song of the Star Aldebaran” for part three’s opening movement.  Written for mostly for strings, we hear further fragmented bird song, water drops, and rustles, as the music seems to create a sense of rapture.  In one sense, it takes its inspiration then from that concluding chord, adding somewhat intriguing dissonance as it unfolds.  The next two movements feature birds.  A second piano solo movement further explores “The Mockingbird” followed by “The Wood Thrush” with the latter being a more joyous expression of life and spirituality indicated in the writings of John of Ruysbroeck.  These central movements recall his Oiseaux exotiques perhaps most of all with ”Omao, Leiathrix, Elepaio, Shama” being most reminiscent of that soundworld.  “Shama” here being explored gloriously in brass.  Blends of the canyon’s beauty and the paradise to come are part of the culmination of “Zion Park and the Celestial City” where a chorale seems to also enter the musical materials with bells ringing out and announcing eternal joy though the music itself seems to step back a bit in a more ethereal way.

    The London Philharmonic label has issued a number of releases on their own label that demonstrate the orchestra’s breadth of repertoire.  Both standard pieces under the direction of well-known conductors, often not as well known for the pieces under their baton on recordings, and unique new, or less familiar repertoire are featured.  This recording perhaps falls into the latter.  The booklet and photos set the stage very well helping to further introduce this important latter 20th Century piece to the unfamiliar while also guiding one through the music.  Myung-Whun Chung has proven to be a sympathetic conductor for Messiaen’s music with many fine recordings of the orchestral works for Deutsche Grammophon including this one.  The piece does have a small, though relatively fine field of recordings to date and we can now count this live performance among them with little or no audience noise to distract.