MESSIAEN: Quartet for the End of Time; Theme and Variations – Trio Wanderer/ Pascal Moragues, clarinet – Harmonia mundi HMC901987, 62:27 *****:
Olivier Messiaen must be the only great composer whose occupation is also listed as that of an ornithologist. It now seems obvious, of course, that birdsong should provide his musical source material. But other than an occasional transient nightingale, quail or cuckoo (all three found in Beethoven’s Symphony No.6, the Pastoral Symphony), birds remained uncredited for assisting in the creation of a musical work of art. With Messiaen’s composition of the Quartet for the End of Time, all that changed. In his preface to the piece, he describes the opening of the first movement as “the awakening of birds: a solo blackbird or nightingale improvises, surrounded by a shimmer of sound, by a halo of trills lost very high in the trees.” He then begins the piece with a solo clarinet imitating a blackbird’s song nearly note-for-note.
Messiaen thinks of birds as manifestations of Angels, as our desire for light and stars, for rainbows and songs. He also sees them as symbols of our endless yearning for beauty and for a kind of eternal timelessness. Paul Griffiths in his book on Messiaen writes that the composer was a more conscientious ornothologist than any previous composer, and a more musical observer of birdsong than any previous ornithologist. Given what birds represent to him, as well as their varied musical capabilities, it is small wonder that Messiaen adopted the species as a compositional portal through which all of his subsequent creativity was obliged to traverse.
The Quartet was composed while Messiaen was a prisoner of war, held by Germany in the POW camp located in what was then the town of Gorlitz in Silesia. It premiered in Stalag VIII-A in what is now Zgorzelec, Poland on January 15, 1941, to an audience of about 400 prisoners of war and camp guards. Messiaen later claimed a rapturous reception from an audience composed of thousands of prisoners. That account – which also includes biting sub-zero cold, a wretched out-of-tune piano, and a cello with a missing string – has since been modified by scholars. But the heroic story of the work’s debut made for exemplary marketing. The piece has been wreathed in legend since its creation. Unlike so many modernist works, the Quartet entered the repertory almost immediately and has remained there. The work is rhythmically complex, melodically austere, and features instrumental timbres that are often evocative of different instruments such as a trumpet or the Ondes Martenot. The spirit of Debussy hovers over the Quartet. Messiaen often evokes bell and gong-like sonorities from the piano. This is a musical recollection of Debussy’s fascination with Indonesian gamelan music, the exotic music of Bali, and the rhythmic complexities of the east. We are even treated to the deci-talas, the Indian rhythms structured upon asymmetrical pulses. There is a complex rhythmic asymmetry throughout the Quartet, making it very difficult to play. The short Theme and Variations, composed in 1932, is stylistically simpler but contains many elements of the later Messiaen.
The Trio Wanderer and clarinettist Pascal Moragues acquit themselves wonderfully on this superb recording. Their phrasing is exemplary: they revel in the expressive purity of the varied sonorities magically conjured for us by Messiaen in music of other-worldly beauty. The Quartet’s melodic reticence naturally produces deeply introspective music. Nevertheless, the Trio Wanderer and Moragues manage to communicate Messiaen’s message of timeless religious ecstasy in a performance of quiet brilliance that is stunning in its restrained musicality. The simple arhythmic repetition of a single note, a recurrent motif in the Quartet, suggests passages to other worlds, like those contained in William Blake’s single grain of sand. In music seemingly composed to accompany a multidimensional traveler, the musicians on this CD are nothing less than our wise and deeply spiritual guides. Having played it once, there was nothing to do but play it again, revealing new discoveries and uncovering even more new worlds. Harmonia mundi’s deep and reverberant sound is slightly recessed, increasing the mystery of this music. The instruments sound rich and full but slightly gauzy, a nearly perfect match for the material. The clarinet especially seems to bloom with a warm burnished tone. It suggests a human voice lovingly embraced by the other three instruments. This is a splendid production all around.
— Mike Birman
