Messiaen and Ellington: Geoffrey Simon, cond., Jay Gottlieb, piano, Thomas Bloch, ondes Martenot, Northwest Mahler Orchestra, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 9.9.2007 (BJ)

 

It took nearly 60 years, but Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony, premiered in Boston in 1949, finally made its Seattle debut, and a resounding success it was too. The organization that ambitiously mounted this 80–minute, 10-movement extravaganza was not the Seattle Symphony, but the Northwest Mahler Orchestra, the primary performance ensemble of the non-profit Northwest Mahler Festival founded in 1995. Of the hundred-plus players on stage at Benaroya Hall for this event, only the section principals and a few of their colleagues, I am told, take part as professionals. But you would not have guessed that from the quality of the performance, which was in every respect worthy to stand on equal terms with the three previous performances of the work I have heard, one by the London Symphony Orchestra, the other two by the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Messiaen incorporated in his score two solo parts. One, for piano, was designed for his wife, Yvonne Loriod. The other, for an early electronic instrument called the ondes Martenot (“Martenot waves”) after its inventor, was usually played for many years by Yvonne’s sister Jeanne. The sheer size of the piece, and the outrageous demands it makes on the orchestra and on two soloists, especially the pianist, are part of the reason it is so rarely performed. It has also to be admitted that the style of the music is not everybody’s glass of champagne, especially among the more austerely inclined sort of critics. After the London premiere around 1950, I remember, Desmond Shawe-Taylor observed in his review that the ugly parts were fine, but he couldn’t stand the beautiful bits.

Listening to the utterly committed performances Geoffrey Simon drew from his players in this Seattle premiere, it was possible to understand what Shawe-Taylor meant, as one soupy string passage with superimposed wobbles from the ondes Martenot succeeded another. But it was also possible to feel that he was being a spoil-sport, for in their somewhat Hollywood-ish way the slow movements, celebrating “love in all its aspects” as Simon explained in his helpful introductory remarks, are delectably luxurious, while on the other hand the often vertiginous quick movements are packed full of brilliant, entertaining, and even thrilling instrumental effects.

From the formal point of view, Turangalîla – the Sanskrit-derived title can be roughly translated as “love song and hymn of joy, time, movement, rhythm, life and death” – s just about as simplistic as all of Messiaen’s larger works. There is no development of materials in any familiar symphonic sense of the word. Themes are simply juxtaposed cheek by jowl. It would actually make little difference to the total effect if the movements, with one or two exceptions, were played in a completely different order. And yet the whole crazy construction, with all its banalities and its stretches of cloying sentimentality, can make a tremendous impact in a good performance, and on this occasion it earned a vociferous ovation from a very respectably filled Benaroya Hall.

In the past twelve years, Geoffrey Simon, Australian born and London domiciled, has come every year to Seattle to work with his dedicated musicians, with whom he has performed all of the nine completed and numbered Mahler symphonies. Back in July, there were, I understand, two initial readings of Messiaen’s score, and then six rehearsals followed in preparation for this concert (which also contained Duke Ellington’s Harlem as a nicely contrasted yet compatible curtain-raiser). That length of preparation is not normally possible in the professional orchestra world. But even two readings and six rehearsals make a relatively meager schedule for a semi-professional orchestra tackling so demanding a work, and the quality of the result was all the more worthy of admiration.

To say that the performance was note-perfect would be slightly inaccurate, but it would also be slightly irrelevant. Messiaen’s score is not so much precisely calculated as vividly imagined. Given its motoric and repetitive rhythms and its often deliberately “dirty” textures, the kind of rough edges that could sink a performance of another 20th - century warhorse such as, say, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring are easily accommodated within the sheer impetus and gusto of the whole. Having said that, I hasten to add that lapses from total control and precision were astonishingly minimal. Simon and his orchestra surmounted their challenges with a wonderful combination of enthusiasm and virtuosity, and Jay Gottlieb’s stunning prestidigitation at the piano, coupled with Thomas Bloch’s masterful handling of the ondes Martenot, supplied the icing on the cake. Many congratulations, and warm thanks, to all involved.

 

Bernard Jacobson

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