June 11, 2008
This concert was absolutely superb. I don't often leave a concert feeling that I've left my head behind in another world, but after the heady mix of Ravel's Piano Trio in A Minor and Messiaen's Quartor pour le fin de temps (Quartet for the End of Time) I had to walk home very slowly to readjust to the real world.
I don't know either of these pieces, and I think the Ravel would benefit from some preparatory study! It's a strange piece in which the violin and cello entwine together as one voice, contrasting with the piano which often plays accompanying chords. Melvyn Tan conveys his enthusiasm at the piano, at times bouncing up and down on his seat as if he's on a horse! Tasmin Little and Colin Carr come across as a polished team although Carr's cello sometimes seems a little quiet. That may just be the way it was facing relative to us, or the register Ravel chooses. It was lovely, though, to hear the cello and piano duet at the start of the third, sombre movement. Perfectly matched and stately, the partnership just made the audience relax and breathe more easily after the frenetic earlier movements. Much like the different voices, the different movements don't initially seem to have much in common, other than the simplicity of their themes. But they do provide a nice range - punchy rhythms, dark chords, dances and contrasts of tempo and volume. I don't really understand how the "biographical impulse" translates to the music, but I came away feeling it would be a piece worth getting to know.
The Messaien Quartet is quite a different animal! As Tamsyn Howell Sprent the Artistic Programme Manager of Music At Oxford points out "just 26 years separates these two French masterpieces, yet to me they seem worlds apart". This might be partly explained by the fact that those 26 years contained 1 and a half world wars, and the uneasy peacetime in between. Ravel finished his Trio hurriedly so he could enlist in World War I; Messiaen wrote his Quartet in a POW camp having been captured at Verdun where he was a medical auxiliary. Ravel chose his instruments, a traditional combination; Messaien wrote for the musicians he happened to meet in Stalag VIII-A at Gorlitz. And yet Messaien's unusal mix of instruments gel into something truly amazing, making a much more complex and coherent piece, interweaving the instruments in more varied ways, than Ravel.
Tan, Little and Carr were joined for the Quartet by Dmitri Ashkenazy. It's a difficult piece, with Messiaen's trademark religious themes, modal nature, complex rhythms and snatches of birdsong. The four musicians played beautifully together, with glances back and forth, and all the sections iwth their different combinations of instruments were perfect. The third movement, Abîme des oiseaux (Abyss of birds), is for solo clarinet. It precedes Le Merle Noir, an audition piece for flute and piano based entirely on blackbird song, which Messiaen wrote in 1952. But the setting of this movement in the Quartet is haunting and quite quite devastating. I guess the literary equivalent would be Siegfried Sassoon's poem Everyone Sang.
And then with a lump still in the throat we were plunged into the Intermède (Interlude) which is witty and charming, with passages of Schubert-like jollity which then subside into modes, recognisably Messaien, darker and complicated once again. I've always thought of Messaien as brilliant but serious, but here was another side. It's scored for strings and clarinet, as though Messaien (the pianist of the original quartet) wanted to sit back and listen!
The sixth movement, Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes (Dance of the fury, for the seven trumpets), is mighty and imposing, with the four instruments (no trumpets!) in unison for much of the time. Like an apocalyptic 8 armed beast they really were as formidable and marvellous as Messaien promised.
In some ways it's unhelpful to single out movements in this way, as it's the effect of the whole thing which is so amazing. It's a piece as complex as real people's emotions. It's got the nostalgia for a world of dancing and gaiety that's passed, the timelessness of a place out of time (as well as Messsaien's enjoyment of pieces without time signatures!), the glee with which the End of Time might be welcomed to wreak vengeance on the wicked, and the feeling of exile. We as an audience were assisted in this last by the sounds of a Friday night in full swing drifting in from outside. That was the world we were not part of, and we were both sheltering and trapped inside the music.
The last movement doesn't really finish, but it doesn't trail off either. Suitably for something entitled Louange à l'immortalité de Jésus (Praise to the immortality of Jesus) it seems to stay hanging in the air. There was a long silence before the audience erupted with applause, calling the performers back for four curtain calls. We didn't give them a standing ovation, but I think that might only have been because we were too stunned. They certainly deserved one.
I don't know either of these pieces, and I think the Ravel would benefit from some preparatory study! It's a strange piece in which the violin and cello entwine together as one voice, contrasting with the piano which often plays accompanying chords. Melvyn Tan conveys his enthusiasm at the piano, at times bouncing up and down on his seat as if he's on a horse! Tasmin Little and Colin Carr come across as a polished team although Carr's cello sometimes seems a little quiet. That may just be the way it was facing relative to us, or the register Ravel chooses. It was lovely, though, to hear the cello and piano duet at the start of the third, sombre movement. Perfectly matched and stately, the partnership just made the audience relax and breathe more easily after the frenetic earlier movements. Much like the different voices, the different movements don't initially seem to have much in common, other than the simplicity of their themes. But they do provide a nice range - punchy rhythms, dark chords, dances and contrasts of tempo and volume. I don't really understand how the "biographical impulse" translates to the music, but I came away feeling it would be a piece worth getting to know.
The Messaien Quartet is quite a different animal! As Tamsyn Howell Sprent the Artistic Programme Manager of Music At Oxford points out "just 26 years separates these two French masterpieces, yet to me they seem worlds apart". This might be partly explained by the fact that those 26 years contained 1 and a half world wars, and the uneasy peacetime in between. Ravel finished his Trio hurriedly so he could enlist in World War I; Messiaen wrote his Quartet in a POW camp having been captured at Verdun where he was a medical auxiliary. Ravel chose his instruments, a traditional combination; Messaien wrote for the musicians he happened to meet in Stalag VIII-A at Gorlitz. And yet Messaien's unusal mix of instruments gel into something truly amazing, making a much more complex and coherent piece, interweaving the instruments in more varied ways, than Ravel.
Tan, Little and Carr were joined for the Quartet by Dmitri Ashkenazy. It's a difficult piece, with Messiaen's trademark religious themes, modal nature, complex rhythms and snatches of birdsong. The four musicians played beautifully together, with glances back and forth, and all the sections iwth their different combinations of instruments were perfect. The third movement, Abîme des oiseaux (Abyss of birds), is for solo clarinet. It precedes Le Merle Noir, an audition piece for flute and piano based entirely on blackbird song, which Messiaen wrote in 1952. But the setting of this movement in the Quartet is haunting and quite quite devastating. I guess the literary equivalent would be Siegfried Sassoon's poem Everyone Sang.
And then with a lump still in the throat we were plunged into the Intermède (Interlude) which is witty and charming, with passages of Schubert-like jollity which then subside into modes, recognisably Messaien, darker and complicated once again. I've always thought of Messaien as brilliant but serious, but here was another side. It's scored for strings and clarinet, as though Messaien (the pianist of the original quartet) wanted to sit back and listen!
The sixth movement, Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes (Dance of the fury, for the seven trumpets), is mighty and imposing, with the four instruments (no trumpets!) in unison for much of the time. Like an apocalyptic 8 armed beast they really were as formidable and marvellous as Messaien promised.
In some ways it's unhelpful to single out movements in this way, as it's the effect of the whole thing which is so amazing. It's a piece as complex as real people's emotions. It's got the nostalgia for a world of dancing and gaiety that's passed, the timelessness of a place out of time (as well as Messsaien's enjoyment of pieces without time signatures!), the glee with which the End of Time might be welcomed to wreak vengeance on the wicked, and the feeling of exile. We as an audience were assisted in this last by the sounds of a Friday night in full swing drifting in from outside. That was the world we were not part of, and we were both sheltering and trapped inside the music.
The last movement doesn't really finish, but it doesn't trail off either. Suitably for something entitled Louange à l'immortalité de Jésus (Praise to the immortality of Jesus) it seems to stay hanging in the air. There was a long silence before the audience erupted with applause, calling the performers back for four curtain calls. We didn't give them a standing ovation, but I think that might only have been because we were too stunned. They certainly deserved one.