Classical byDermot Clinch
The film footage is famous: faithful wife, tape recorder in hand, follows her husband through a forest outside Paris. The composer transcribes birdsong; the wife's tape catches what his ear and pen have missed. Now, in the church of St Giles, Cripplegate, in the City of London, Olivier Messiaen's widow since 1992 gives a recital of her husband's piano works. She plays birdsong music. Do we distinguish the "bluish grey, satiny and blue-black" of the rock thrush from the lesser blue of the Mediterranean Sea in the same piece? Do we tell the song of oriole from woodlark? Programme notes have never seemed so important.
The BBC's Messiaen festival, aptly for a composer who saw colours in musical notes and God in everything, was called simply Visions. Yvonne Loriod, distinguished pianist and even more distinguished apostle of her late husband and Master, played Preludes from 1928-29. Her husband's early music - he was born in 1908 - inhabits the impressionistic world of Debussy, and offered the ever-present impressionist betrayal: of coffee that smells better than it tastes. Could the substance of a piece called "The Impalpable Sounds of Dreaming" ever match the vaporous promise of its title? Will we ever see "A Reflection in the Wind"?
By 1956, and the chiffchaffs, curlews and redstarts of the Catalogue d'Oiseaux, Messiaen is dealing with palpable realities and inhabiting territory - bird-thronged and God-intoxicated - from which he will never stray. The Messiaen Sound penetrated the weekend's concerts: the blare of brass, confident in major-key proclamation of whatever glory is to be proclaimed; the wave-like ripple of favoured, schmaltzy chords up and through the orchestra's, or piano's, or organ's, range; the skittish jabber of birds. The most approachable and undoubting composer of, perhaps, the entire century.
The TurangalIla symphony in the final concert was well attended and burstingly applauded, as any programme featuring the work these days is likely to be. The music of the Jardin du Sommeil d'Amour, with its eerie electronic solo for Ondes Martenot, its chirruping piano birdcall and swooping melody, sang with a gaudy, Bombay Cinema beauty. The symphony's Sanskrit title reflects an interest in Indian modes and rhythms, but also a fatal attraction for the exotic. Messiaen at his most extravagantly, naively beautiful will always turn heads. But by comparison with the slow movement of Ravel's piano concerto that antecedes it so clearly, Messiaen's garden of love is a paradise of complacency.
The TurangalIla, conducted by Sir Andrew Davis, our latest musical knight, brought forth the loudest noises many of us may have heard in the concert hall. Is praise for mere volume faint praise? Not necessarily; not in Messiaen. Radio 3 introduced the Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jesus as an "Everest" of 20th-century piano music, by which they meant, after all, it was good. And if Des Canyons aux Etoiles, Messiaen's work in praise of the Utah canyons and the Glory of God, contained fewer than 12 parts and lasted less than 100 minutes, would it be so impressive a piece? Messiaen's is an art of brute statement, not argument; the logic is: "Because Messiaen says so." Certainty, clarity, sheer volume are of the essence.
The ecstasy is piled high and is sold - so it seemed during the Barbican festival - a little cheap: Messiaen's trick, perhaps, to ensure all God's creatures can afford a slice. Messiaen's influence - the teacher of Boulez, Stockhausen, Goehr, Benjamin - was never doubted. His weight and sincerity could not fail to impress. But "Aimez-vous Messiaen?" seemed another question. Respect, revere, adore: perhaps. Like, or love? It was hard to get so close.
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