Thursday, February 14, 2008

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.

Monday, February 04, 2008

On Ross's "The Rest is Noise"

I've just finished The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross. Surprisingly I found it a tough read even though it was on the top of my Christmas wish-list, I had high expectations. What I can't quite put my finger on is how and why he chose to discuss some composers and essentially ignored others. Perhaps it was too broad a brush and too much for one book.

In particular, I was interested in his comments on the last 30 years of the 20th century. I was looking for pointers to new compositions and composers, but I wonder if I really want to hear some of them. Of La Mont Young, he suggests the Berkley music department gave him money 'to get him out of town', then quotes 3 supposed compositions. Do I really want to listen to him? There's a lot on Pierre Boulez and John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and of course Schoenberg, Berg and Webern, but tonal composers? He groups John Taverner and Michael Gorecki but says nothing about them. Gorecki's 3rd Symphony was a big commercial hit, but nothing more is said of him. There are interesting details about Stravinsky, Shostokovich, Copland, Sibelius, Britten and Richard Strauss and the effects of the world around them on their music.

I'm not a musician, so when Ross talks says it "ends in unambigous B-flat major" or "D-flat major, D major with B attached, E-flat major and the notes C and E" he leaves me cold. I can't imagine it and would need a keyboard to sound it out. Perhaps it's meaningful to a real musician, but it's nothing to me.

The historical coverage of the World War II impact on music was insightful. In an earlier post, I noticed the lack of broadcasting of Bruckner's symphonies. Perhaps I now understand it differently. Ross points out how frequently during the Nazi era Bruckner's works were performed. Apparently he was almost as popular as Wagner and Strauss. Is there some anti-German bias creeping into the broadcast selections? I've always concluded his omission had more to do with the length of the symphonies, but now I wonder a bit.

I'm lending my copy to a friend with similar interests. Let's see what he has to say, assuming that he takes the time to plow through the full 543 pages.