EIF: London Symphony Orchestra: The Road to Turangalîla and Turangalîla
Usher Hall - 18/08/23, 6pm & 8pm
Music by (i) Dukas, Milhaud, Debussy & (ii) Olivier Messiaen
Sir Simon Rattle, conductor | Nicola Benedetti, presenter | Peter Donohoe, piano | Cynthia Millar, Ondes Martenot
The night of Friday 18th August brought the culmination of the London Symphony Orchestra’s residency at the Edinburgh International Festival, under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle, to the Usher Hall in a pair of programmes, the first exploring the unique music-making culture of the LSO and the creative influences that led to the composition of Messiaen’s explosive 1948 masterpiece, Turangalîla-Symphonie, the second a performance of the work.
The first concert, dubbed ‘The Road to Turangalîla’, started with Dukas’ Fanfare from his late ballet La Péri, a short blistering piece for brass chorale, alike in dynamic thrust and impact to similar moments in Messiaen’s symphony, relevant because Dukas was Messiaen’s teacher and a formative influence on Messiaen’s orchestration skills. It was also Dukas who exhorted his pupils to “listen to the birds”, sparking Messiaen’s lifelong fascination with birdsong.
Then Nicola Benedetti and Sir Simon Rattle sat and spoke about the LSO and the other works on the programme. Nicky recalled a trip in her youth, while she was still studying at the Yehudi Menuhin School, in the company of her friend Alina Ibragimova, whose father was the principal bassist of the LSO, backstage at The Barbican and being blown away by the atmosphere of intense playful creativity that she found there, making a deep and lasting impression. Simon spoke of the brief period of 3 years in the early 1960s when Pierre Monteux directed the LSO, building its international reputation, in particular as performers of French repertoire (though apparently, he hated the Turangalila Symphony). The two other works of the programme were introduced, with the reasons for their inclusion.
A small theatre orchestra was all that was needed for Milhaud’s 1923 ballet music, La creation du monde, an African creation myth couched in the earliest classical jazz. Jazz harmonies, built into huge complex chords, lie at the heart of the most ecstatic music in Turangalîla. In the Milhaud they are charmingly louche.
Debussy’s three-movement symphony (in all but name), La Mer, closed the first programme with music that is fabulously evocative and unmistakably French. The full orchestral palette of the LSO was unleashed and it was awe-inspiring. Intervals and orchestral colours found in Debussy’s music abound in Messiaen’s, an influence embraced and expanded to monumental proportions. The unanimity of expressive power that we had seen earlier in the week under Noseda with Rachmaninov and Shostakovich was, if anything, more intense with Rattle. Expectations of a phenomenal second concert were raised.
My first mind-blowing hearing of Turangalîla was live in the St Francis Xavier Hall in Dublin with the RTE Symphony Orchestra under Colman Pearce, as part of the 1977 Dublin Festival of 20th Century Music. The composer’s wife and sister-in-law, Yvonne and Jeanne Loriod, played the solo piano and ondes Martenot parts and the composer was in the audience. The ondes Martenot is an early amplified electronic instrument with a keyboard, a slider for producing swooping glissandi and controls for other effects like volume and vibrato. It produces a clear sine wave and has 4 speakers, one of which is strung with sympathetic strings. I met the composer after the performance, both unforgettable experiences. The LSO also features in my personal relationship with the piece, as I bought Previn’s 2LP 1977 vinyl recording soon after the live performance and got to know the work intimately.
In the Usher Hall, a huge barrage of untuned percussion, together with the timpani and tubular bells, were ranged up the back of the stage. At the front, the ondes, piano, celeste, keyed glockenspiel and vibraphone made the music-making visually exotic, evoking elements of an Indonesian gamelan. The piano part is extremely virtuosic with some awesome cadenzas to negotiate - Peter Donohoe more than up to the task. Cynthia Millar stylishly put the ondes through their paces.
The work is organised into two sections, each with 5 movements. The name is a contraction of two Sanskrit words which defy literal translation but mean something like “the overwhelming joy of the continuous cycle of creation, love, life and death”. As well as gamelan music and birdsong, there are oblique quotations from ‘Tristan’ and ‘Rosenkavalier’, a love motif which emulates Hollywood love scenes, not so much Korngold and Steiner as Duke Ellington and big band jazz harmonies, a stark fearsomely masculine ‘statue’ motif, evocative of grotesque ancient Central American sculpture and a delicate feminine ‘flower’ motif which recurs on two clarinets from time to time.
The symphony is probably best seen as a human love story, played out on a cosmic scale. Not that it’s all cataclysmic. The 6th movement that begins the second section is titled ‘Jardin du sommeil d’amour’ (Garden of Love’s Sleep). In it the strings and ondes play the love theme slowly and pianissimo, while the piano plays birdsong. Serene and idyllic. The 5th movement, ‘Joie du sang des étoiles’ (Joy of the Blood of the Stars), is an ecstatic dance culminating in a massive crescendo on a major chord. If ever you need to blow the cobwebs away, it’ll do the trick, as will the finale. Just when you think the crescendo can’t get any louder, the tam-tam ramps up the decibels. Mind-blowingly good.
Well, the LSO were ‘in the zone’ with every moment of this extraordinary music. Clearly they and Sir Simon love it, and they lost no time in convincing the audience likewise. A superb closure to their memorable residency. Full marks from me.
Cover photo: Andrew Perry