Messaien's Eclairs sur l'au dela.
- Thread starter Fox
- Start date
Tantris
pfm Member
I agree - this is one of Messiaen's most enthralling pieces. The Myung Whun Chung set on DG is superb, but I am pleased that I remembered to record this Prom. The Debussy preceding this was also very good, I think.
Did you hear the Boulez Sur Incises last week - that was also a great performance.
Did you hear the Boulez Sur Incises last week - that was also a great performance.
duncan
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Just got back from the concert! I wholeheartedly concur with fox. Magnificent performances of both La Mer and Eclairs sur l'au dela... I didn't know the work but it seems a fitting epitaph to one of the great orchestral composers of last century. I'll certainly be looking for a recording. Any suggestions? I got given a ticket to sit in the stalls so abandoned the arena for the first time in about ten years. It's OK slumming it amongst the rich and famous once in a while but ironically the sound is better when you stand.
Yes to the Debussy, it was early on just switched on and thought... hold on that's... Naah... is it? Bloody Hell it is... (But only when the main theme played) Sir Simon Rattle has this knack of being either soppily mellifluous or brutally paired back and the Debussy was IMO the former -- I wasn't sure who the Orchestra was at the time as they had a fatness to the sound I didn't recognise (sounding absolutely nothing like Karajan's Berliner Phil) so off to the Radio 3 website I went (laptop in living room -- so sue me for the extra undriven drivers) and saw he is up to his usual trick of pulling in the punters with something "nice" and mainstream -- I think its safe to damn Debussy with the tag of mainstream now and then hitting them with a big old slab of 20th C modernism... Educate the bastards interested in only the Three B's.
Sir Simon does this. I heard him do Mahler's 4th at Wells Cathedral (with the CBSO) with Penderecki's Threnody and Messiaen's Et Expecto 5-6 years back and I walked away more impressed with the Et Expecto even though the punters came for the Mahler.
I would love a hack and spew filter on my radio though -- the audience really was saving up some stomach bubbling throat clearings for the space between movements weren't they?
Sir Simon does this. I heard him do Mahler's 4th at Wells Cathedral (with the CBSO) with Penderecki's Threnody and Messiaen's Et Expecto 5-6 years back and I walked away more impressed with the Et Expecto even though the punters came for the Mahler.
I would love a hack and spew filter on my radio though -- the audience really was saving up some stomach bubbling throat clearings for the space between movements weren't they?
duncan
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Rattle's three concerts at the Proms this year epitomised what I love and find frustrating about him as a conductor. He obviously knows the scores intimately and delights in bringing out details that other conductors miss or gloss over. In so much 20th Century music this works fabulously and last night's Messaien was a great example of that. Like much Modernism, it's all about surface and texture. The Rheingold also worked for me, a real revelation, aided by some wonderful singing. Sometimes the attention to detail means that 'the big picture' can get a little lost. Unfortunately the Choral symphony on Sunday failed, very slightly, in that respect. The two opening movements were brisk, exciting and incredibly virile and I really felt it had the makings of a truely great interpretation. The slow movement was beautifully played and measured but sounded like a different conductor had stepped up to the podium in the (prolonged) pause between movements. The audience didn't help the collective concentration mind you. The finale sounded different again, with fantastic singing from the Birmingham chorus but a very average quartet of soloists. This was still a very fine performance, one of the best live renditions of the piece I've heard and a considerable improvement on the last time I heard Rattle in the work. Perhaps the 9th is one of those pieces that's cursed by it's reputation as A Great Masterpiece that it can never quite come off in the way you feel it potentially could. What I've rarely felt with Rattle conducting the central German repertoire is the sense of an over-arching musical idea or structure. This is something that happens very rarely in my experience and usually only in live concerts but he demands to be judged by the highest musical standards.