Superb
Mahler Sixth Riccardo Chailly, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra at the BBC Proms, Prom 69. Such a stunning performance that it would be wrong to do something superficial. Plenty of places to go if you want shallow, but it would pain me. After a year and a half of indifferent to horrible Mahler performances, at last something really worth listening to! So please come back to this site tomorrow.
UPDATE ! Chailly's Leipzig Mahler 6 HERE. In the meantime, I'll comment on Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Messiaen
Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum.
This Prom (BBC Prom 69)
was unusual because it wasn't loud. No strings attached in more ways
than one! The
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra have one of the most gorgeous string
sections in the world, Without string sections, orchestras are "dead". So Chailly and the Leipzigers understand what
Et exspecto means. It was commissioned by the French Government to commemorate those who died in the 1939-45 war, who would never return.
Messiaen's Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum is a companion piece to
The Quartet for the End of Time. (
read more here). The quartet was first performed in a prisoner of war camp
on broken instruments in freezing conditions. Hence the spartan economy with which
Et exspecto is orchestrated.
You don't hear the strings, but you listen "because" they are not there. Chailly and the Leipzigers also respect the long
silences Messiaen specified between movements. At first, the Proms
audience didn't know what to expect and coughed and fidgetted but then twigged Chailly had his head bowed for a reason. These silences were meant for contemplation. Messiaen, being devout, understood the Stations of the Cross in Catholic practice, each Station a kind of scena to be meditated on before going onto the next. Respecting this silence between movements is part of the progress of the work as a whole.
Contemplation in a work as shockingly dramatic as this? It's perfectly in order for any conductor to go for the overwhelming power of the piece, but the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra isn't brassy and showy like some orchestras are. Volume isn't what they are about. Their
Et exspecto was gentle, but from an orchestra like this, violence would not be sincere. What's more,
Et exspecto isn't really about Death but about resurrection. The earth is torn apart by cataclysm, but the end result is eternal life and union with God, or whatever higher force you might conceptualize.
Et exspecto is extreme: hence the crashing cymbals and wailing brass. But gloomy it's not.
There is no such thing as "non-interpretation" in any form of music. You can't even look at a score without interpreting how the notes might sound in relation to each other. Chailly's
Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum may be different, but he's arrived at it by interpreting why it might be the way it's written. "Music is not in the notes" said Mahler. It's why the notes are put together.
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Here is what I wrote about Messiaen Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum last year at the time of the Tsunami in Japan.
Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum.
Because Olivier Messiaen's
Et exspecto resurrection mortuorum
is about the End of the World, it's scary to listen to at this time (Japanese Tsunami). But maybe this is, after all, the time to listen to what it really
means. There is a deliberate Japanese connection, since Messiaen
visited and loved Japan. He is emphasizing universal spiritual values
which apply to all, Christian or not.
Note the orchestration. No strings!
The Quartet for the End of Time can
be heard as a prototype. Twenty years later, and after nuclear war
became a reality, Messiaen goes for maximium power. Massed percussion
forms the bedrock of
Et exspecto, for it
represents the earth itself, ripped asunder by the Apocalypse.
Specifically Messiaen uses six giant Asian gongs, more powerful than tam
tams. Gongs call the faithful to order. Ritual progression is very much
part of this music's structure, so gongs mark stages in its raga-like
plateaux. Metallic percussion, too, rather than timpani, for dissonance.
Pitched cowbells, and a gigantic set of tubular bells which ring out
like an organ, the composer's personal instrument. Against the
percussion,woodwinds create birdsong or the sound of wings in flight.
Brasses range from small D trumpet to Wagnerian tuba. What would the
Final Judgement be without trumpets? Messiaen wants strident, not
resonant.This work is, after all, about waking the dead.
The ritual character of
Et exspecto is
underlined by quotations from different parts of the Bible. It's a Via
Crucis which unfolds in stages. First: "From the deepest abyss I cry,
Lord hear me!", which is what Jesus is supposed to have called out in
his time of agony. Massive dark chords like tectonic plates, shifting
inexorably. The brass like the rumbling of some deep fissure, which
explodes into wild, screaming chords and ends in a single, piercing
shriek. Hearing this after Sendai is painful. Then silence, extremely
important as it marks an invisible, inaudible transit.
In
the second section, a moment of calm reassurance, for Christ has risen
from the dead. Diaphanous textures, which grow into quirky, jerky
angles. The movement of birds, intuitively darting in crazy angles so
they can't be caught. As Messiaen the ornithologist would have
understood. Birds are fragile, but they evolved from dinosaurs, and
survived. Even greater stillness marks the beginning of the third
section, but now the tubular bells toll, calling like the bells in a
church. The woodwinds describe an even more powerful bird theme - a bird
from the Amazon jungle, apparently, which has existed outside
civilization. Messiaen is referring to creation itself, connecting the
Beginning and End of Time. In Christian belief, an Angel blows a trumpet
and graves open. Hence the darkening "earthquake fissure" theme.
Wild, jerky figures associated with the "birds" start the fourth
section, which soon the percussion explodes. When these gongs crash,
it feels like blinding light, a shocking, flashing thunderbolt in sound.
At this moment, I can't help but think of the cataclysmic light of a
nuclear explosion. Ironically, it's the Resurrection, start of a new
era.
The final movement almost defies description. Powerful ostinato, gongs
and blocked percussion, repeated over and over, driving the point in so
there's no mistaking its force. Gradually the music turns, like a
juggernaut. The image of an eternal wheel, perhaps propelling the music
ever forward. Messiaen uses the quotation "And I heard the voice of an
immense crowd". It's an immense crowd becauase all who have died in the
past have been raised from death and suffering. (That's assuming God
doesn't discriminate between faiths). That's why the whole orchestra
marches forth in unison. Gradually the pace builds up to an overwhelming
climax. It's not a march in conventional symphonic terms but owes its
structure, perhaps, to Japanese gagaku, which inspired Messiaen's
ground-breaking
Sept Haïkaï, written in 1962, soon after Messiaen returned from Japan, and two years before
Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum.
In
Sept Haïkaï, the image is a “floating gate”, the torii at the Miyajima shrine in Japan.
The red arches stand alone in the sea, as if suspended between earth
and sky. It is a gate, but to what? The arches stand amid a panoramic
open landscape. As the weather changes, as time changes, the
surroundings change dramatically. Photo by H Orihashi. Read more about
Sept Haïkaï HERE.
For
Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum means
"In expectation of the resurrection of the dead". It's not meant to be
oppressive or gloomy. It was commissioned as a memorial to the French
war dead, but Messiaen was having no truck with militarism or even
national glory. Instead he comes up with something so unique and so
universal he wanted it performed in the Alps. So if the Christian form
of this piece bothers you, remember that for Messiaen, God resided in
Nature, and mountains were Nature's cathedrals.