Messiaen Centenary Concert

Messiaen Centenary Concert
Wednesday 10th December 2008
Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London

Messiaen Couleurs de la Cite Celeste*
Messiaen Sept Haikai^
Pierre Boulez sur Incises

Sebastien Vichard piano*
Pierre-Laurent Aimard piano^
Ensemble Intercontemporain
Pierre Boulez conductor

http://messiaenfestival.com/

Back in February I said Messiaen and Pierre-Laurent Aimard brought me to the Royal Festival Hall for the first time 7 years ago and they took me back for the amazing concert which was the opening night of Southbank Centre's year-long Messiaen centenary festival, featuring Aimard, Susanna Malkki and the Ensemble Intercontemporain (EIC) doing Des Canyons aux etoiles. Having waited for a year, it has finally come to the closing night of the festival, on Messiaen's actual centenary, with Aimard, the festival director, again on the piano and Pierre Boulez, Messiaen's most celebrated pupil, conducting his own ensemble performing two relatively underplayed works by Messiaen and, oddly, Boulez's own sur Incises. One wonders why the team is not celebrating the centenary in Paris instead, but I am not complaining!

Twenty years ago, on Messiaen's 80th birthday, Boulez conducted both Couleurs de la Cite Celeste (1963) and Sept Haikai (1962), amongst other works, with the composer's wife Yvonne Loriod on the piano and this performance has been released on CD which is how I came to know the works four years ago. Couleurs has since become one of my favourite compositions by Messiaen. Both Couleurs and Sept Haikai are works from Messiaen's middle period, when the composer used bird-songs in his compositions very extensively, and both work feature very virtuosic solo piano parts which are written especially for the highly gifted Yvonne Loriod, Messiaen's second wife.

On the other hand, sur Incises (1996 - 1998) is an unusually accessible composition by Boulez and a piece of work I am very, very fond of. It is so successful that the CD has been re-issued twice and there is a DVD around with a sampler on Youtube. I first came across it four or five years ago completely by chance and it has since become a frequent item on my playing lists. I have always wanted to hear Boulez conducting his own work live, esepecially by the wondrous EIC. Given this concert has most of my favourite musicians all at the same time on one stage performing two of my favourite works by two of my favourite composers, this is as close to my dream concert I can ever ask for.

The evening started with Couleurs de la Cite Celeste. The soloist changed from Pierre-Laurent Aimard to Sebastien Vichard, which caused minor disappointment. Vichard actually delivered a solid performance in a very fragmented work which is Couleurs, but it was Boulez and the EIC who ultimately disappointed. The brass players sounded like they were going to faint and silences between passages were not convincing. I am not sure whether it was because a relatively small ensemble was playing in a big hall, or that the players had been overworked for two big centenary concerts on consecutive nights playing highly demanding music, but the majority of the performance seemed to be dragging on a bit and at times drowned.

Sept Haikai was conceived after the composer's visit to Japan and it is a work inspired by the Japanese scenary, landscapes, gardens, birds, rituals etc. It involves a bigger ensemble, a fuller sound and the performance was an improvement from the previous work. Pierre-Laurent Aimard took the soloist spot and it was his magical cadenzas that basically stole the performance. I am still a bit unsure about the brass, but the involvement of the winds and violins this time gave an overall more refined sound and the winds were top-notch.

The strange programming of Boulez's own sur Incises actually was the highlight of the concert. It is a work developed from a single-movement toccata-like solo piano piece called Incises which consists of a combination of violent repeated notes or chords, interjecting melodies and resonating chords. Imagine that, give it to three pianists, three harpists and three mallet percussionists, shake and stir in Boulez's style, and you get 45 minutes of non-stop firework. The CD has a very clear and clinical sound (very well recorded) but this live performance used a lot more of the spatial environment. The exceedingly large hall, which I claimed to have given Couleurs a disadvantage, actually gave sur Incises an extra edge which created resonance and an acoustic sound world that was a real pleasure and privilege to experience. The dynamic range (especially the chords towards the end) and communications and tension among the players can only be clearly identified in a live performance.

Personally, this is not going to outstage the amazing opening night. Then again, how many people can actually stage these fiendishly difficult work in one concert back to back? Not Boulez and EIC at their very best, but still a very good concert and I certainly enjoyed sur Incises to every bit. It has been an honour to be in the audience at all.



This entry is adopted from an earlier blog of mine, which no longer exists