Olivier Messiaen

I had the pleasure of attending a concert of all-Messiaen piano music at the University of Colorado the other night. Hsing-Ay Hsu, director of CU's Pendulum New Music series, performed 5 works, some with MinTze Wu on violin and Alejandro Cremaschi, piano. What a great concert and such interesting music. It's Messiaen's Centennial so over the next few weeks there will several local performances of his works.

In Alex Ross's "The Rest is Noise" Messiaen plays an important role. Ross writes about his influence and about his World War II imprisonment in an Nazi concentration camp where he wrote The Quartet for the End of Time. Surprisingly Ross is silent about the Turangalila Symphony and praises From the Canyons to the Star, which I've never heard and which has not be broadcast on any of the FM stations I catalog. Amazon has it, but the price is awfully high. I guess I'll have to wait on Canyons.

What I particularly liked at Hsing-Ay's concert were two excerpts from Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jesus. She gave a brief explanation of the setting of the work, and called it one of the greatest piano pieces in the 20th century. While I thought that might be a bit of hyperbole, I started to wonder what would be the greatest. The piano music of Ravel and Debussy would probably rank up there, but then what else? I'm not sure that Hsing-Ay's hyperbole might not just be correct.

While I guess it is not surprising, Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jesus, is seldom broadcast on the 7 all-classical FM radio stations I monitor. Only WQXR(New York) and KUSC(LA) have broadcast movements from it in the last 4 years. Here in Denver, nothing, though, for example, Debussy's Children's Corner Suite has been broadcast 103 times in the last 4 years. Now I really enjoy Debussy's piano music, but as I'm writing this, I'm also listening to an interesting performance by Madelaine Fort of six pieces of Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jesus with commentary by her husband Alan Forte. The Debussy suite or Ravel's Pavane for a Dead Princess (133 broadcasts in Denver) are, to me, just not that much better than the Messiaen. So why have the radio stations not chosen to allow us to hear him? Your guess is as good as mine.