MESSIAEN
Les Offrandes oubliées. Chronochromie.
DUKAS
(arr. van Keulen)
La plaint, au loin, du faune…
DALBAVIE
La source d’un regard.
ZUIDAM
Adam-Interludes
1
George Benjamin,
1
Ingo Metzmacher, cond; Royal Concertgebouw O
•
RCO LIVE RC 09003 (SACD: 72:31) Live: Amsterdam 11/07 (Dukas, Messiaen, Dalbavie); 6/08 (Zuidam)
Titled
New Horizons 2
, this disc is the second in a series presenting contemporary scores live from the Concertgebouw on the orchestra’s house label. It forms a tribute to Olivier Messiaen, but rather than concentrate solely on the French master, it places his work in a wider context. The program is thoughtfully laid out, and all the more exciting because it introduces us to two new works written as recently as 2007–08. Three new works, if you count the orchestration of Dukas’s
La plaint, au loin, du faune…
The latter was a short piano piece, composed in 1920 to commemorate the death of Debussy. In it, Dukas quotes liberally from the
Prelude à l’aprés-midi d’un faune
, and the Debussyan connection is even clearer in Geert van Keulen’s orchestration. Hence, it is a perfect scene-setter: Not only was Messiaen a pupil of Dukas, but Debussy was a major influence on his early work.
The opening bars of
Les Offrandes oubliées
seem to flow naturally out of the preceding piece, yet even as early as 1930 Messiaen’s particular sound is in evidence. There is a certain grandeur: the atmosphere of the cathedral, as opposed to the open air of Impressionism. The second movement breaks the mood; it is a savage scherzo, marked
Vif (féroce, désparée, haletant).
The third and final movement is a harmonized monody, a device much favored by the composer in his song cycles and the later
Turangalîla-symphonie.
By 1960, Messiaen had discovered birdsong as an overwhelming musical influence, and was in his compositional prime. The dazzling
Chronochromie
dates from that year. Packed with complex detail—at one point, 18 solo strings play different musical fragments simultaneously—it can be a hard nut to crack. As a young collector, I owned the Angel LP with Doráti conducting the work on side 2. Unfortunately, I was so taken with Koechlin’s
Les Bandar Log
on side 1 that I rarely got around to the Messiaen. When I did, I found it too dense to follow. Now, with the clarity and sheer beauty of this new performance, its myriad true colors are revealed.
Of the two younger composers represented—one French, one Dutch—Marc-André Dalbavie is the known quantity. At least two CDs exist of his orchestral music; one of them, containing a violin concerto and a piece aptly titled
Color,
appeared on
Fanfare
reviewer Robert Carl’s Want List for 2005. Carl described the composer’s strengths as “a refinement of color (and) a sense of surprising, evanescent harmony.” That is certainly the case with
La Source d’un regard
: Opening with a four-note bell motif, the composer proceeds to explore its timbral and harmonic ramifications in a kind of timeless soundscape, the dreamy atmosphere recalling both Debussy and Messiaen. Dalbavie has been labelled a proponent of “spectralism,” a composing technique developed at IRCAM in Paris and used by such composers as Tristan Murail. Originally it involved mapping a sound spectrum using computer data analysis as the basis for a composition, but the definition of spectral music was broadened (at the 2003 Spectral Music Conference in Istanbul!) to encompass “any music that foregrounds timbre as an important element of structure or musical language.” This beguiling work fits smartly into the program.
The other new work is a suite of three orchestral extracts from an unfinished opera,
Adam in Exile
, by Rob Zuidam (currently a visiting professor at Harvard). The first begins with modernist sound clusters but soon morphs into shifting textures à la Dalbavie and full chords, notably in the brass, reminiscent of Messiaen. Zuidam’s mastery of his forces is impressive, and I particularly like the edge of tuned percussion he brings to the orchestral fabric. The
Adam-Interludes
are tonal (in the contemporary sense of consonance), especially the second interlude, taken from a duet sung by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Birdsong is depicted briefly by woodwind, mainly clarinet—another Messiaenic touch. The final movement builds on a repeating scale figure to rise to an ecstatic climax, albeit with a throwaway ending. Zuidam (b. 1961) on this showing is a strong voice and an exciting discovery.
The performances, recorded live with no audience audible, are top-notch. The
Gramophone
reviewer found the sound slightly soft-edged, and so it is, but this is an advantage in the potentially harsh textures of
Chronochromie.
The orchestra, needless to say, plays with great refinement throughout under the guidance of composer/conductor George Benjamin and Ingo Metzmacher, both highly experienced in contemporary repertoire. For many reasons, this issue demands an urgent recommendation.
Phillip Scott
