Messiaen Des canyons aux étoiles…Ludovic Morlot, conductor; Martin Owen, horn; Steven Osborne piano
Following on from Tuesday’s performance -of La Rondine, I was reflecting on how relatively few years there are between the writing of, say, Turandot and Messiaen’s ‘From the Canyons to the Stars’…no more than about 50 years. That is well within the span of my adult life yet they seem to inhabit totally different universes of sensibility. And yet there is maybe a hint of perfume and lushness to the Messiaen that Puccini might have understood even while other aspects of the work would perhaps have baffled him. In fact, we can compartmentalise composers too much – I was reading in a book about Elgar and the early recoding industry recently that he was very keen to hear more of Stravinsky’s music…..Anyway….it was quite a jump in two evenings from Puccini to Messiaen…..
I have heard this work a few times in a recording I’ve got and I remember some of the movements – the one about Aldebran and the last movement for instance. I was surprised and pleased to see that it had been scheduled by the BBC Phil (good old BBC) though a bit apprehensive about how I would feel listening to the whole 90 minutes of it rather than just selected highlights.
A decent number of people turned up to the performance – I had the impression from some overheard conversations that some had come from London to hear it, as after all it is rarely performed.
I had not really appreciated beforehand how individual the orchestral set up is – only a small number of strings, solo horn and the important solo piano (the work is almost like an enormous piano concerto), plus fore-grounded glockenspiel and xylorimba (the latter a new one on me), lots of heavy brass and significant numbers of woodwind and a battery of percussion, including the wonderful ‘geometer’ – like a wind machine but with pebbles inside. Messiaen of course based the work on his trips to the USA in the early 70’s and specifically to Utah, where he was hugely struck by the landscape,. which he described (as per the programme) as “the most mystical landscape” he had ever encountered, particularly the red-orange rock of Bryce Canyon. As someone who has slept overnight on the desert slopes of Mt Sinai, and seen the stars there more brilliantly than anywhere else in the world, I’ve had something of that same sense (I am sure less profoundly than Messiaen), from the experience, of the beauty and vastness of the universe and the unlikelihood of it all being a random collocation of atoms. It’s a work I have a sense of empathy with in its celebration of the natural and spiritual.
It’s an absorbing work and the 90 minutes seemed to flash by. The work was superbly performed by Steven Osborne on the piano, by Martin Owen on the horn (the ‘Appel interstellaire’ for solo horn was an astonishing piece of playing) and the glockenspiel and xylorimba soloists, together with the orchestra. The most enjoyable movements for me were 5. ’Cedar Breaks et le don de crainte’, 7. Bryce Canyon et les rochers rouge-orange, the beautiful 8. Les ressuscités et le chant de l’étoile Aldébaran and the final movement Zion Park et la cité céleste. If I am being honest some of the bird song movements were less than gripping, but, maybe, you need their sparseness and spikiness as a contrast to the awe, splendour and peace of the ‘spiritual’ music. As always with Messiaen (maybe Turangalila is more approachable than the other big pieces) it’s not easy music but I do find it very rewarding and, ultimately, moving. There’s a lovely quote from St Augustine I came across the other day which exactly fits how I felt about this work as I listened to it – “I feel that all the various emotions of the heart have rhythms proper to them in verse and song, whereby , by some mysterious affinity, they are made more alive” .
John's musical journey 