In his pre-concert talk, however, Nacho de Paz explained that the two composers whose works we heard both held universe-explaining obsessions, albeit of radically different kinds, and thus both composed according to their philosophy.
The main attraction for me personally was the Scriabin Poem of Ecstasy. The composer at the time of its composition was becoming obsessed with theosophical ideas, where a synthesis of ideas, religions and human experience were raised to a force which could drive the universe. The Poem of Ecstasy predated his work on The Mysterium, that vast unfinished work, whose first performance in the Himalayan foothills in India might just bring an end to the universe, the composer thought. The Poem of Ecstasy, an orchestral piece in one movement, otherwise known as the composer’s fourth symphony, was much closer to the fundamental core of human experience. It has clear sexual meaning and, when all said and done, without sex there would be no humans. Nacho de Paz, in his pre-concert talk, seemed to ignore this angle, concentrating on Scriabin’s exploration of the multiple harmonics that naturally spring from a long note. For Nacho de Paz, the massive apotheosis of the Poem of Ecstasy was a symbol of Scriabin achieving a kind of mathematical perfection by synthesising the mathematical possibilities of harmonics. My view is that it represents a purely physical, not mental experience. The performance of the work regularly achieved the composer’s intended dynamics, thus rendering the experience of listening quite physical.
The other two works on the program were both by Olivier Messiaen. Now Olivier Messiaen was a devoted Christian, a Roman Catholic, who constantly strove to reveal a spiritual truth through his musical composition. The fact that audiences often find his work hard to appreciate is his apparent rejection of form in his work. Messiaen’s music rarely conforms to what anyone expects from a concert piece. It is always meditative and possibly also intensely personal, even when, for instance in the Nine Meditations on the Holy Trinity, he is exploring the transliteration of text in the music. He called the system he invented a “communicable language”, but often audiences find that they have never learned his language.
The two works on offer in this concert were Les Offrandes Oubliées and L’Ascension. The former is the more conventional concert piece, but in the end, when the music literally dissolves into silence, the effect is strange in that the music does not seem to embody emotion. It simply exists.
L’Ascension’s four movements are effectively a concerto for orchestra. The first movement concentrates on brass, the second on wind and the last strings. Messiaen explores the sonorities just like any other composer would when trying to show off what an orchestra can do, but doubly baffling then is the decision to use only the strings in the last movement and then only part of the strings on the platform. Harmonically, Messiaen’s music is always recognizable. His signature is complex and, for the casual ear, it is perhaps unintelligible. Repeated listening, however, reveals patterns that the composer uses time and again, but they remain unconventional. The complications of dissonant notes in ecstatic chords always seems to cast doubt into the meaning of the music, doubt that still might have troubled the composer.
Overall, the concert
was a triumph. It presented three twentieth century masterpieces on a single
programme, works that presented composers grappling with the philosophies that drove
them. Harmonies used by both composer were truly ecstatic. But by then end of L’Ascension,
the slow progression of the music was surely a vision of the infinite that no
human being can comprehend.
