CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Discovery Day: Olivier Messiaen

Weill Recital Hall
Sunday, February 24th, 2008 at 1:00 PM

Pierre Boulez, Speaker
Peter Hill, Speaker
Michael Mizrahi, Piano
Elizabeth Joy Roe, Piano
Jeremy Geffen, Host and Moderator

1:00 PM to 5:30 PM

1:00 - 2:00 PM
Lecture
Peter Hill: Olivier Messiaen in an Age of Change

2:00 - 3:00 PM
Film Screening
Olivier Messiaen: The Crystal Liturgy (directed by Olivier Mille)

3:00 - 3:30 PM: Break

3:30 - 4:30 PM
Interview
Jeremy Geffen with Pierre Boulez

4:30 - 5:30 PM
Performance
Messiaen Visions de l'Amen
Michael Mizrahi, Piano
Elizabeth Joy Roe, Piano


In the centennial year of Olivier Messiaen's birth, Carnegie Hall explores the life and work of this French master with a Discovery Day of panel discussions, talks, and a film screening. The event will include an interview with composer-conductor Pierre Boulez – a close colleague and former student of Messiaen – and will conclude with a performance of Messiaen's Visions de l'amen for two pianos.

Sound Insights

Program Notes:

Film Screening: Olivier Messiaen: The Crystal Liturgy
Directed by Olivier Mill, The Crystal Liturgy: A Portrait of Olivier Messian includes a wealth of archival footage of the composer and filmed interviews with Messiaen’s colleagues and former students. Offering many insights into the composer’s working methods and relationships with key colleagues, the film explores the composer’s varied musical influences: his profound religious faith, his ability to “see” music in terms of colors, his unique approach to rhythm, and his interest in and use of birdsong in his compositions.

Performance
OLIVIER MESSIAEN Visions de l’Amen
Born December 10, 1908, in Avignon; died April 28, 1992, in Paris.

Composed in 1943, Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen received its Carnegie Hall premiere

Released from prisoner-of-war camp in 1941, Messiaen was slow to get going again as a composer in occupied Paris. The stimulus he needed came from Yvonne Loriod, who arrived as one of his students and was to become his second wife; almost at once, he wrote Visions de l’Amen (1943) for the two of them to play. Her part, according to his note in the published music, has “the rhythmic difficulties, the bunches of chords, everything concerned with speed, allure, and quality of sound”; while to himself, at the second piano, he allotted “the principal melody, the thematic elements, everything demanding emotion and power.” The two pianos together become a percussion orchestra, akin to the gamelans of Indonesia, to which the music seems to look also in its frequent moments of pentatonic character. Its principal key, A major, was for Messiaen the tonality of luminous blue, of the sky, of Paradise.

From the mystical writer Ernest Hello came the four meanings of “Amen,” which again are outlined in Messiaen’s preface: the Amen uttered by the Creator in creating, the Amen of obedience to the divine will, the Amen of longing for union with God, and the Amen of the eternal consummation of everything in Paradise. These meanings can be associated in turn with the first, third, fourth and last movements, but the fundamental sense of “Amen,” as a gesture of assent, can be felt throughout the work, for the most obvious musical image of assent is the cadence, and the whole cycle is founded on a “theme of Creation,” which is an enlargement of a pentatonic cadence.

The following notes are adapted from the composer’s own.
I. Amen de la Création (“Amen of Creation”). The first piano plays a double rhythmic pedal in carillon style, on non-retrogradable (i.e. palindromic) rhythms. The second piano expresses the theme of Creation. The whole piece is a crescendo.
II. Amen des étoiles, de la planète à l’anneau (“Amen of the stars, of the ringed planet”). The second piano projects the theme of the planets’ dance. There are three developments, then a varied repeat of the planets’ dance.
III. Amen de l’agonie de Jésus (“Amen of the Agony of Jesus”). The form is that of a Greek triad: strophe, antistrophe, epode. Strophe: Jesus alone on the Mount of Olives. Three musical motifs: the Father’s curse on sin, a cry, and a tearing lament on four notes. Antistrophe: the same music, more developed, with the addition of low rhythmic ostinatos suggesting the sounds of gongs and tam tams. Epode: recollection of the theme of Creation. A long silence, broken by pulsations, evokes the suffering of this hour.
IV. Amen du désir (“Amen of Desire”). There are two themes of desire. The first is slow, ecstatic; the second much more vehement. In the coda the two main voices seem to intermingle.
V. Amen des anges, des saints, du chant des oiseaux (“Amen of the Angels, of the Saints, of Bird Song”). At first the song of the angels and saints is uncomplicated, very pure. Then a middle section on birdsongs requires a more brilliant style of keyboard writing. Following this is a varied reprise of the song of the angels and saints, with a canon in non-retrogradable rhythms on three levels. Brief coda on the birds.
VI. Amen du jugement (“Amen of Judgement”). Three frozen notes, like the bell of evidence.
VII. Amen de la consommation (“Amen of Consummation”). The second piano takes up the theme of Creation and draws from it a long chorale of glory. The first piano, at both extremes of the keyboard together, creates a ceaseless carillon of chords and brilliant, scintillating rhythms, in increasingly crowded rhythmic canons: sapphire, emerald, topaz, jacinth, amethyst, sardonyx—the whole rainbow of precious stones mentioned in the Apocalypse, sounding, jarring, dancing, colouring, and perfuming the light of eternal life.
—Paul Griffiths

Paul Griffiths is the author of numerous books on music, including The New Penguin Dictionary of Music and, most recently, A Concise History of Western Music (Cambridge University Press).

Copyright © 2008 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Pierre Boulez, Speaker
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus, Pierre Boulez is one of the most important musical and intellectual figures of our time. Mr. Boulez was named principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony in March 1995 and served in that position until 2006, when he became conductor emeritus.

A native of Montbrison, France, Mr. Boulez pursued studies in piano, composition, and choral conducting at the Paris Conservatory. In 1953–54, he founded the Concerts du Petit Marigny, a series dedicated to modern music, which later became the Domaine Musical. He subsequently was involved with musical analysis and taught in Darmstadt and at Basel University. In 1962–63, he was visiting professor at Harvard University, and in 1976 he became a professor at the Collège de France.

Mr. Boulez began his conducting career in 1958 with the South west Radio Orchestra in Baden-Baden, Germany. From 1969 until 1972, he was principal guest conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra. In 1971, he became both chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and music director of the New York Philharmonic, a position he held until 1977.

Mr. Boulez’s difference of opinion about state intervention in the arts as espoused by André Malraux led him into voluntary exile for several years. He returned to France in 1974, when the government invited him to create and direct a music research center at the Pompidou Centre. From the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) sprang the Ensemble Intercontemporain, one of the world’s finest contemporary music ensembles. In 1991, Boulez resigned as conductor of the ensemble, while continuing as its president.

Mr. Boulez’s compositions are widely performed, including Le marteau sans maître, Pli selon pli, three piano sonatas, Eclat/Multiples, Le visage nuptial, Répons, Notations, and . . . explosante-fixe . . . . He has published five books about music. His awards include honorary doctorates from Leeds, Cambridge, Basel, and Oxford universities, among others; Commander of the British Empire; and Knight of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Mr. Boulez’s discography includes prize-winning recordings of Parsifal and Berg’s Lulu. He has won 26 Grammy awards.

Peter Hill, Speaker
Peter Hill is a scholar and pianist working mainly in the contemporary and 20th-century repertoires. He studied at Oxford and at the Royal Conservatory of Music, where his teachers included Cyril Smith and Nadia Boulanger. He was awarded first prize at Darmstadt (1974) for his performances of Cage and Stockhausen, and his complete recording of Messiaen’s solo piano works, made with the composer’s help and encouragement, has been described as “one of the most important recording projects of recent years” by the New York Times. Other recordings include CDs of Beethoven (the Diabelli Variations), Stravinsky, and the Second Viennese School (Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern). Peter’s books include The Messiaen Companion (Faber and Faber) and Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring (Cambridge University Press). In 2001 he and his colleague Nigel Simeone were granted permission to carry out research in the private Messiaen archive. Their biography Messiaen (Yale University Press) was published in 2005 and is currently being translated for publication in France (Fayard) and Germany (Schott). A further joint-authored book (Olivier Messiaen: Oiseaux exotiques, published in 2007) includes a detailed investigation of the composer’s musical sketches. Peter joined the staff at Sheffield in 1976. He is co-director with Peter Cropper of the MA in Music Performance, and teaches undergraduate courses on Messiaen, Mozart, Baroque counterpoint, and performance.

Michael Mizrahi, Piano
Pianist Michael Mizrahi has won acclaim for his compelling performances of a wide-ranging repertoire and his ability to connect with audiences of all ages. He has appeared as concerto soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and music educator across the US and in Europe.

Mr. Mizrahi has performed as soloist with the Houston Symphony, National Symphony, Haddonfield Symphony, Sioux City Symphony, and Prince Georges Philharmonic orchestras, performing in such venues as the Kimmel Center, the Kennedy Center, and Houston’s Jones Hall. In 2005 Mizrahi appeared as soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto, K. 488, with the Curtis Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Leon Fleisher. Mizrahi is a founding member of the Moët Trio, which is quickly establishing itself as one of today’s most exciting young piano trios. The Moët Trio is in residence at the New England Conservatory this season. Equally at home with contemporary music, Mizrahi is a founding member of NOW Ensemble, a chamber group devoted to the commissioning and performing of new music by emerging composers. A winner of Astral Artistic Services’ 2005 National auditions, Mizrahi joined Astral’s artist roster that year.

In January 2007 Mizrahi was selected to join 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. Under the auspices of this ground-breaking new program, Mizrahi teaches music at a New York City public school, participates in workshops with leading classical musicians and entrepreneurs, and appears with other Academy members in chamber music concerts at Carnegie Hall and throughout New York City.

Michael Mizrahi received a BA in music and religion from the University of Virginia and a doctoral degree in piano performance from the Yale School of Music. Former teachers include Robert Wyatt, Eric Himy, Mary Kathleen Ernst, and George François.

Elizabeth Joy Roe, Piano
American pianist Elizabeth Joy Roe has captured acclaim from critics and audiences alike for her appearances as recitalist, orchestral soloist, and chamber musician. As the winner of the prestigious William Petschek Piano Debut Recital Award, Ms. Roe made her New York recital debut at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall last season. She made her New York concerto debut in 2005 under the baton of James Conlon, performing the Britten Piano Concerto at Alice Tully Hall. Ms. Roe has performed at major venues around the world, including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall and Weill Recital Hall, the 92nd Street Y, and Steinway Hall in New York; the Seoul Arts Center in Korea; Salle Cortot in Paris; the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; the Ravinia Festival in Chicago; Salón Dorado and Teatro Argentino in Buenos Aires; the Banff Centre in Canada; and the Gina Bachauer International Piano Festival. Upcoming performance highlights include chamber music concerts with the Ensemble ACJW at Carnegie Hall, concerto appearances nationwide and abroad, and a Korean recital debut at the Hoam Art Hall in Seoul.

Ms. Roe has been honored by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, the National Association for Professional Asian Women, the Music for Youth Foundation, the Samsung Foundation of Culture, and the Soros Fellowship for New Americans. Ms. Roe earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The Juilliard School, receiving Scholastic Distinction at graduation for her thesis exploring music in the fiction of Mann, Proust, and Forster. Her wide-ranging career includes world premieres, live performance broadcasts and interviews on TV and radio, and a groundbreaking piano duo partnership with Greg Anderson. Ms. Roe is currently a teaching artist fellow for 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. For more information, visit elizabethjoyroe.com.

Jeremy Geffen, Host and Moderator