Olivier Messiaen: Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus

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Written in 1944, when Messiaen was 36, this work is often viewed as a masterpiece of the 20th century. It is formidable in size, length, volume, and visionary ambition. A devout Roman Catholic, Messiaen drew inspiration from the Church and its symbols, as well as from the sights and sounds of nature, especially the bird-songs that he loved and incorporated into his music. The 20 movements of this work are meant to illustrate different ways of contemplating the Nativity. They bear elaborate titles, which however do not seem to illuminate the music, at least for those unfamiliar with the religious background. But this does not really matter to the actual musical experience. The work's most pervasive characteristics are its obsessive repetitiousness, and, apart from a few soft, beautifully lyrical sections, its relentlessly high decibel level. The sustained intensity and aggressive ferociousness of the banging and crashing can be quite terrifying. Contrast is created through different textures, tempi, moods, and sudden short-lived drops in dynamics. Messiaen's genius found expression most arrestingly in his orchestration; he exploits, combines and contrasts instrumental colors and timbres with extraordinary mastery and imagination. Here, he almost succeeds in turning the piano into an orchestra, making it sing, speak, growl, clang, crash, and scream. Sometimes it seems to carry on a conversation between different registers or between contrapuntal, chordal, and call-and-response elements. The harmonic structure is fairly simple and essentially static. There are strong echoes of Debussy, of jazz, and of waltzes a la Richard Strauss. The performance is spectacular. Peter Serkin, long one of Messiaen's foremost interpreters, triumphs over all pianistic, sonic, intellectual and emotional demands. Piling sonority upon sonority, finding melodic voices in the huge chords and contrapuntal lines in the thick textures, he keeps even the slowest sections from sagging and turns the fast ones into powerful, scintillating cascades, leaving the listener dazzled and exhausted. --Edith Eisler