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Carnegie Hall News
Back to Press Release List > 01/17/2008 - Music of Olivier Messiaen Explored in Two Multimedia "Discovery" Events, Feb. 08
CARNEGIE HALL CELEBRATES 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF OLIVIER MESSIAEN’S BIRTH
TURANGALÎLA SYMPHONY EXPLORED IN A “DISCOVERY CONCERT”
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15 AT 8:00 P.M. IN STERN AUDITORIUM/PERELMAN STAGE
Conductor David Robertson Leads the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra in a
Multimedia Exploration of Messiaen’s Transcendent Masterpiece
On February 24, “Discovery Day: Olivier Messiaen” Offers
Film, Performance, and Discussions
—Including a Conversation with Messiaen’s Colleague Pierre Boulez—
Exploring the Life and Work of the 20th-Century Master in Weill Recital Hall
Carnegie Hall celebrates the centennial of the birth of great French composer Olivier Messiaen with a pair of multimedia programs in February 2008. On Friday, February 15 at 8:00 p.m. in Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage, conductor David Robertson leads the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra in a dynamic Carnegie Hall Discovery Concert on Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony, the composer’s ecstatic orchestral masterpiece and ode to love. The program includes a discussion led by Robertson aided with musical excerpts and visual imagery on a screen above the stage during the first half, followed by a full performance of the work.
“When the whole piece is played,” Robertson explains, “the audience will have a better sense of context, of how things fit together, of where the symphony was in the cultural climate—as well as the particular things that make Messiaen’s personality so marvelous and compelling.”
Messiaen, a devout Catholic, composed many works based on religious themes. The Turangalîla, which he referred to as a “love song,” concerns itself primarily with human love; although with a fifth movement titled “Joy of the Blood of the Stars,” this is love on a cosmic or divine scale. The work is composed for a very large orchestra, with important parts for piano and ondes martenot, an early electronic instrument and cousin of the modern-day synthesizer that produces a warm, otherworldly sound beloved by musicians from Edgar Varèse to Radiohead.
Carnegie Hall’s Discovery Concerts are affordably priced—$10 to $35—multimedia presentations that blend lively commentary and visual enhancements with musical demonstration, providing an entry point for new listeners, as well as new opportunities of insight for all audiences, into some of the greatest musical works ever composed. Previous Carnegie Hall Discovery Concerts have explored Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin, and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5. Robertson previously led a Discovery Concert comparing the parallel worlds of Debussy and Monet in 2005.
In a second program celebrating the Messiaen centenary, Carnegie Hall presents Discovery Day: Olivier Messiaen on Sunday, February 24 at 1:00 p.m. in Weill Recital Hall. With tickets costing $9, this afternoon of discussion, performance, speech, and a film screening explores the life and work of the French master. Highlights include a conversation with Messiaen’s colleague and former student, composer and conductor Pierre Boulez; and a performance of Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen for two pianos by Michael Mizrahi and Elizabeth Joy Roe, two Fellows of The Academy—a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and The Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education.
The Discovery Concert and Discovery Day are both programs of Sound Insights, an adult education program of Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute.
Olivier Messiaen / Turangalîla Symphony
Excerpted from the Carnegie Hall program note by Paul Schiavo:
Olivier Messiaen is widely recognized as one of the most important composers of the 20th century, the creator of a startlingly original body of music, and a profound influence on several generations of colleagues. Yet his work, more than that of any musician of comparable stature, stands outside the main currents of compositional development that shaped the music of his time. Embracing none of the modernist styles or movements (serialism, neoclassicism, etc.), Messiaen followed his own sensibilities throughout his career, forging a highly individual musical language based on bird calls, rhythms derived from an ancient Hindu treatise, synthetic scales of his own invention, numerical symbols, and a strongly felt affinity between sound and color. The result was a body of work striking in its originality.
Messiaen’s music expressed a visionary frame of mind consistently concerned with the stupendous, the miraculous, and the transcendent. The composer drew his inspiration from religious revelation, from the most vast and violent manifestations of nature, and from the songs of birds, whom he regarded as “the greatest musicians of the planet.” Even the most patently human experience—romantic love—was experienced by Messiaen in mystical and mythic terms. Great love, according to the composer, is “a love that is fatal, irresistible, and which, as a rule, leads to death; a love which, to some extent, invokes death, for it transcends the body—even the limits of the mind—and extends on a cosmic scale.” It is a love that Messiaen found expressed most vividly in the legend of Tristan and Isolde.
In the late 1940s, Messiaen wrote three compositions inspired by the notion of transcendent love as manifested in the Tristan myth. The most ambitious of these works, and one of the most remarkable of all the composer’s scores, is the huge Turangalîla Symphony. The term “Turangalîla” is a composite of two sanskrit words and is rich in meanings. “Turanga” refers to time—or, more precisely, to the movement of time, “time that slips like sand through an hourglass or time that runs like a galloping horse,” in Messiaen’s poetic explanation. “Lîla” signifies love, life, movement, and the cosmic game of creation and destruction. Thus “Turangalîla” implies the temporal occurrence or rhythm of life, love, and death.
Two instruments enjoy special status. In most of his orchestral works, Messiaen featured the piano in a quasi-solo role, a practice greatly influenced by his close relationship—as teacher, collaborator and, after 1962, spouse—with the pianist Yvonne Loriod. (Loriod played in the premiere performance of Turangalîla Symphony and performed the work many times since.) Here the piano contributes virtuoso cadenzas, melodic phrases based on bird songs, and a rich array of chords, arpeggios, and other figures. More exotic is the ondes martenot, an electronic instrument invented in 1928 by the French engineer Maurice Martenot. Played on a keyboard or with a slide mechanism that permits swooping glissando effects, its tone is high pitched and ethereal. It can penetrate the most thickly scored orchestral climaxes, raising the level of sonic frenzy to an altogether higher degree, or else croon sweetly in lyrical passages.
The ten movements of Turangalîla Symphony contain no detailed programmatic references and offer no dramatic continuity. Instead, they present a series of highly unusual—one might even say surreal—aural meditations on love and death. The quality of those meditations is remarkable and wide-ranging. They include the juxtaposition of weighty, powerful, even violent music with passages of intense delicacy; movements that dance to rhythms reminiscent of Indian or Balinese ceremonies; an atmosphere of tropical languor, replete with slow, sweet, perfumed melody punctuated by bird songs; glittering piano solos; and the tremendous scherzo movements that mark each half of the composition. Messiaen called the first of those movements Joie du sang des étoiles. This title, which means “Joy of the Blood of the Stars,” suggests cosmic ecstasy, and that is what, in his unique style, the composer conveys here. The symphony ends with another ecstatic effusion, hardly less delirious than the earlier scherzo.
Artist Information
Conductor David Robertson has established himself as one of today’s most sought after conductors, recognized for his consummate musicianship, dynamic presence, and imaginative programming. Combining passion and intellect with an extensive knowledge of orchestral and operatic repertoire, he has been hailed as much for his technical and interpretive mastery as for his versatility. Fall 2007 finds Mr. Robertson embarking on his third season as Music Director of the 128-year-old Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, while continuing as Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, a post to which he was appointed in 2005. Highlights of David Robertson’s 2007–08 guest engagements include a residency with the Los Angeles Philharmonic entitled Concrete Frequency, featuring three separate programs, including the world premiere of a new work by Michael Gordon and Bill Morrison. Additional US guest appearances include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and Metropolitan Opera. In June, Mr. Robertson will be the music director of the 2008 Ojai Music Festival. Internationally, in addition to his commitments with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Robertson appears as a guest conductor with the Tonhalle Orchestra, Swedish Radio Orchestra, and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
Prior to his Saint Louis Symphony and BBC Symphony Orchestra appointments, Mr. Robertson held several posts abroad. He was the first artist ever to simultaneously hold both posts of Music Director of the Orchestre National de Lyon and Artistic Director of that city’s Auditorium, responsibilities he took on from 2000–2004. From 1992–2000, he was Music Director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris, of which Pierre Boulez is Honorary President, and from 1985–1987, he was resident conductor of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. Born in Santa Monica, California, David Robertson attended London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he studied French horn and composition before turning to orchestral conducting. Mr. Robertson is the recipient of Columbia University’s 2006 Ditson Conductor’s Award, and he and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra received the ASCAP Morton Gould Award for Innovative Programming for the 2005–06 season from the American Symphony Orchestra League. Musical America named him Conductor of the Year for 2000. In 1997, Mr. Robertson received the Seaver/National Endowment for the Arts Conductors Award, the premier prize of its kind, given to exceptionally gifted American conductors. In May 2007, he was granted an honorary doctorate from Maryville University. David Robertson and his wife, pianist Orli Shaham, have recently become parents of twin boys. Mr. Robertson also has two teenage sons.
Pianist Nicolas Hodges was born in London in 1970. One of the most exciting performers of his generation, he is equally active in several fields: 19th-century, early 20th-century, and contemporary music. He has close working relationships with many composers including John Adams, Harrison Birtwistle, Elliott Carter, Brian Ferneyhough, Oliver Knussen, Helmut Lachenmann, and Olga Neuwirth. Elliott Carter’s concerto “Dialogues” was written for Hodges, who premiered it in 2004 with the London Sinfonietta and Oliver Knussen. This was followed by a recording of the work for Bridge Records, and he has subsequently given premieres with the Chicago Symphony and Daniel Barenboim, The MET Chamber Ensemble and James Levine, Asko Schoenberg Ensemble, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Tokyo Sinfonietta, and Remix Ensemble. Hodges has recorded critically acclaimed CDs for the labels Col Legno, BVHAAST, Dischi Ricordi, Metier, and Nonesuch. His recording of Harrison Birtwistle’s complete piano music was released in 2004 and was named Disc of the Year by the Sunday Times.
Cynthia Millar studied the ondes martenot first with John Morton in England and later with Jeanne Loriod, who with her brother-in-law, Olivier Messiaen, has done so much to bring the instrument to a wider public. Since Millar first performed the Turangalîla Symphony at the BBC Promenade Concerts in London with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, she has performed the work all over the world with conductors including Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Andrew Davis, André Previn, Esa Pekka Salonen, Edo de Waart, Leonard Slatkin, David Roberston, and Kent Nagano. She has also performed in premieres of Turangalîla in Scotland, Singapore, and Washington DC, and in 1996, she played in the first performances in Los Angeles for more than twenty years with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Other repertoire includes Honegger’s Joan of Arc at the Stake, Varèse’s Equatorial, and Messiaen’s Trois petites liturgies. She has recorded this work twice: with the London Sinfonietta and Terry Edwards on the Virgin Classics Label, and with the Netherlands Chamber Choir.
The Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) has been a source of pride for the St. Louis region since its founding in 1880. The SLSO has earned a reputation as a first-tier orchestra through generations of excellent performances, its mastery of a wide-ranging repertoire, and a tradition of partnering with leading musical artists from around the world. Led by innovative American-born conductor David Robertson, the Orchestra continues to strive for artistic excellence, fiscal responsibility, and community connection. In addition to its regular concert performances at Powell Symphony Hall, the SLSO is an integral part of the St. Louis community, presenting more than 250 free education and community partnership programs each year.
The Weill Music Institute creates broad-reaching music education programs, playing a central role in Carnegie Hall’s commitment to making great music accessible to as many people as possible through creative musical interaction and inspiring lifelong learning. Educational programs are woven into the fabric of the Carnegie Hall concert season, with opportunities for preschoolers to adults, new listeners to emerging professional musicians. With its access to the world’s greatest artists and latest technologies, The Weill Music Institute is uniquely positioned to inspire the next generation of music lovers, nurture tomorrow’s musical talent, and shape the evolution of music education itself. The Weill Music Institute annually serves over 115,000 children, students, teachers, parents, young music professionals, and adults in the New York City metropolitan area, across the United States, and around the world.
Programs of The Weill Music Institute include: Family Concerts at Carnegie Hall and free Neighborhood Concerts in all five boroughs, which bring music to thousands within the greater New York City community each year. School-based programs enable students at all levels to participate in curricula that are age-appropriate, interactive, and conform to New York City, state, and national education standards. Professional Training Workshops connect emerging young musicians with internationally renowned artists. The Academy—a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and The Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education—provides extensive performance opportunities and intensive music education training in an innovative new two-year fellowship for post-graduate musicians. The Weill Music Institute also brings its educational programs to national and international audiences, using web-based and distance-learning technology.
Program Information
Friday, February 15 at 8:00 p.m.
Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage
DISCOVERY CONCERT: MESSIAEN’S TURANGALÎLA-SYMPHONIE
Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra
David Robertson, Music Director and Conductor
Nicolas Hodges, Piano
Cynthia Millar, Ondes Martenot
OLIVIER MESSIAEN Turangalîla-symphonie
Sounds Insights, a program of The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall
Sponsored by Ernst & Young LLP
Tickets: $10, $15, $20, $25, $30, $35
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Sunday, February 24 at 1:00 p.m.
Weill Recital Hall
DISCOVERY DAY: OLIVIER MESSIAEN
Pierre Boulez, Speaker
Michael Mizrahi, Piano
Elizabeth Joy Roe, Piano
Jeremy Geffen, Host and Moderator
Sounds Insights, a program of The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall
Tickets: $9
Programs of The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall are generously supported by the City of New York: Office of the Mayor, the Department of Cultural Affairs, and the New York City Council; and by the New York State Council on the Arts.
Bank of America is the Proud Season Sponsor of Carnegie Hall.
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Ticket Information
Tickets are available at the Carnegie Hall Box Office, 154 West 57th Street. Tickets may also be charged to major credit cards by calling CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800 or online by visiting www.carnegiehall.org.
A limited number of student/senior citizen discount tickets, priced at $10, may also be available for some Carnegie Hall events. They are on sale at the Box Office beginning at noon until 1 hour before concert time. Student/senior discount tickets for some Weill Recital Hall events are available at the Box Office one hour before the performance. Please call CarnegieCharge for ticket availability.
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