LSO/Rattle Messiaen Eclairs sur L'Au-Dela

[silvestrione]

I hoped someone would comment on this. I heard Rattle/BPO do it at the Proms some years back, sitting in the choir. Didn't quite have the impact I hoped for. This one seemed better (I listened on the radio, last Monday): amazing sonorities, a kaleidoscope of sounds and harmonies, and virtuoso bird-woodwind. LSO strings inspired in the last movement. (But surely short measure for a concert)

[Serial_Apologist]

I hoped someone would comment on this. I heard Rattle/BPO do it at the Proms some years back, sitting in the choir. Didn't quite have the impact I hoped for. This one seemed better (I listened on the radio, last Monday): amazing sonorities, a kaleidoscope of sounds and harmonies, and virtuoso bird-woodwind. LSO strings inspired in the last movement. (But surely short measure for a concert)

When this work was first heard, I thought the title was "Eclairs dur L'eau dela": Chocolate eclairs floating on the water over there!

[Pulcinella]

There are a couple of comments on the What are you listening to now? thread; #8593 and following.

[jayne lee wilson]

A very good performance which I posted on the listening thread....but perhaps missing a degree of intensity, sheer force in The Stars and The Glory?...

After taping the broadcast premiere with Nagano, I bought almost every commercial recording to date I think (apart from an early Polish Release)....
Despite the manifest qualities of Chung and Rattle, for blazing and beautiful sound and intensity of interpretation, the one I return to most is the Vienna Phil/Metzmacher (Kairos)...

It would be nice to resurrect dedicated Performance concert threads again, but is the demand/response out there...?

[Bryn]

A very good performance which I posted on the listening thread....but perhaps missing a degree of intensity, sheer force in The Stars and The Glory?...

After taping the broadcast premiere with Nagano, I bought almost every commercial recording to date I think (apart from an early Polish Release)....
Despite the manifest qualities of Chung and Rattle, for blazing and beautiful sound and intensity of interpretation, the one I return to most is the Vienna Phil/Metzmacher (Kairos)...

It would be nice to resurrect dedicated Performance concert threads again, but is the demand/response out there...?

I did get the Wit and, far more crucially, the Porcelijn. If you do not have that, take measures to rectify the situation, then add Cambreling, if you do not already have it. Expect a PM re. the LSO/Nagano. I was amazed to find recently that the Metzmacher remains unreviewed by any customer of amazon.co.uk. Agreed, it is pretty stunning.

[Master Jacques]

I bought almost every commercial recording to date I think (apart from an early Polish Release)....

If the "early Polish release" you missed was the Wit performance with the Polish Radio SO (Harmonia Mundi) I'd have to say you missed a treat. It's a live performance, warts and all, and not the acme of recorded quality; but in my opinion it's "got something" which neither Chung nor Rattle get anywhere near. There is a spiritual intensity, particularly in the string playing, which is profoundly moving. Lots of good performances around, to be sure, but this is a great one!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

If the "early Polish release" you missed was the Wit performance with the Polish Radio SO (Harmonia Mundi) I'd have to say you missed a treat. It's a live performance, warts and all, and not the acme of recorded quality; but in my opinion it's "got something" which neither Chung nor Rattle get anywhere near. There is a spiritual intensity, particularly in the string playing, which is profoundly moving. Lots of good performances around, to be sure, but this is a great one!

I have Wit with the Polish National Radio SO of Katowice on the JADE label - which I think was the first commercial release of the work, recorded Live in 1993, and with a superb booklet (too thick to slip into the CD case, it was accommodated instead in a cardboard slipcase) written by Clément.

If this is the same recording, I quite agree with your admiration for the performance, MJ. I have terrible difficulties with Messiaen's Music, but Wit's drier approach gets me closer to this work than Rattle's over-sugared approach (as exemplified in his CBSO and BPO performances, which I found repellent). If I ever manage to bridge the gap between myself and Messiaen, it will be performances of this calibre that will get me there.

[jayne lee wilson]

The Wit/Jade was indeed the first release, beating Chung on DG by about 6 months...MEO was very enthusiastic about both...(6/94 & 12/94)... more tonal beauty and refinement in the Chung, greater excitement of discovery and live frisson in the Wit...
The Jade is on Qobuz and still around as a 2ndhand CD (just ordered...)...

In fact most of the recordings have excellent movement-by-movement commentary, some like Porcelijn and Chung include the very extensive Yvonne L-M notes, which list every single bird in every movement! (Usefully Englished in the ABC release)...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yes - my bad: the Yvonne Loriod commentary is the one provided in the JADE/Wit recording, too (M Clément providing merely the biographical and background information. Copious Musical examples from YL-M throughout - exemplary.

[Master Jacques]

I have Wit with the Polish National Radio SO of Katowice on the JADE label - which I think was the first commercial release of the work, recorded Live in 1993, and with a superb booklet (too thick to slip into the CD case, it was accommodated instead in a cardboard slipcase) written by Clément.

If this is the same recording, I quite agree with your admiration for the performance, MJ. I have terrible difficulties with Messiaen's Music, but Wit's drier approach gets me closer to this work than Rattle's over-sugared approach (as exemplified in his CBSO and BPO performances, which I found repellent). If I ever manage to bridge the gap between myself and Messiaen, it will be performances of this calibre that will get me there.

It is indeed the same recording - some copies seem to be HM badged, some not. I agree with your characterisation of the basic difference in approach, though of course (and paradoxically) the ultimate effect of Wit's less emotive approach, his interest in line rather than detail, is to produce a more potent concentration of emotions.

[Bryn]

The Wit/Jade was indeed the first release, beating Chung on DG by about 6 months...MEO was very enthusiastic about both...(6/94 & 12/94)... more tonal beauty and refinement in the Chung, greater excitement of discovery and live frisson in the Wit...
The Jade is on Qobuz and still around as a 2ndhand CD (just ordered...)...

In fact most of the recordings have excellent movement-by-movement commentary, some like Porcelijn and Chung include the very extensive Yvonne L-M notes, which list every single bird in every movement! (Usefully Englished in the ABC release)...

I recall frequent visits to Orchesography in Cecil Court to enquire which would be the first recording to arrive. I was somewhat put out to learn that the Porcelijn had been held back (said to be on the orders of Universal bosses) to let the Chung get established. I will have to revisit the Wit. My appreciation of the work had been strongly coloured by the Nagano, in consequence of which I found the Wit rather prosaic.

[Serial_Apologist]

I have Wit with the Polish National Radio SO of Katowice on the JADE label - which I think was the first commercial release of the work, recorded Live in 1993, and with a superb booklet (too thick to slip into the CD case, it was accommodated instead in a cardboard slipcase) written by Clément.

If this is the same recording, I quite agree with your admiration for the performance, MJ. I have terrible difficulties with Messiaen's Music, but Wit's drier approach gets me closer to this work than Rattle's over-sugared approach (as exemplified in his CBSO and BPO performances, which I found repellent). If I ever manage to bridge the gap between myself and Messiaen, it will be performances of this calibre that will get me there.

For me the more sugary approach to interpretations of Messiaen's music is more appropriate to some of the 1940s works, such as Turangalïla, which for me makes many of them very much love-hate affairs! But I find myself very much in tune with your view, ferney; in later works, such as the string orchestra movement in Eclairs in which there is a partial return to an earlier aesthetic, it comes across in more sympathetic interpretations.- for me at any rate - as if transmogrified through a more rarified sensibility. If I were totally antipathetic to the romantically effulgent side of this composer, I would recommend initially approaching him via works of the 1950s and 1960s such as Le reveil des oiseaux, Oiseaux exotiques, Chronochromie, Couleurs de la Cite Celeste and Et Exspecto Resurrectionem, in which the structuralism that had already found sympathy with younger composers such as Boulez, Barraqué and Stockhausen, finds itself unadorned and to the forefront.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

If I were totally antipathetic to the romantically effulgent side of this composer, I would recommend initially approaching him via works of the 1950s and 1960s such as Le reveil des oiseaux, Oiseaux exotiques, Chronochromie, Couleurs de la Cite Celeste and Et Exspecto Resurrectionem, in which the structuralism that had already found sympathy with younger composers such as Boulez, Barraqué and Stockhausen, finds itself unadorned and to the forefront.

- it is Messiaen's work from the '50s (don't forget the piano Quatre Etudes) & '60s that make me persevere with his other works. (A London Sinfonietta concert in Durham in the early '80s combining Oiseaux Exotiques and Coleurs de la Cite Celeste with two works by Ligeti [Melodien and the Chamber Concerto ] is one seared on my memory with great affection. )

[Richard Barrett]

I have to admit I haven't heard Wit or Porcelijn, or if I have I don't remember anything about them. What I do remember is that I found the Chung recording unconvincing, Rattle somewhat more so and Cambreling right up my street. But then there are very few Messiaen works which don't interest me, and some of them are pieces I feel a strong attachment to and return to again and again. Eclairs is possibly not one of these, but maybe it will become one.

[jayne lee wilson]

For me the more sugary approach to interpretations of Messiaen's music is more appropriate to some of the 1940s works, such as Turangalïla, which for me makes many of them very much love-hate affairs! But I find myself very much in tune with your view, ferney; in later works, such as the string orchestra movement in Eclairs in which there is a partial return to an earlier aesthetic, it comes across in more sympathetic interpretations.- for me at any rate - as if transmogrified through a more rarified sensibility. If I were totally antipathetic to the romantically effulgent side of this composer, I would recommend initially approaching him via works of the 1950s and 1960s such as Le reveil des oiseaux, Oiseaux exotiques, Chronochromie, Couleurs de la Cite Celeste and Et Exspecto Resurrectionem, in which the structuralism that had already found sympathy with younger composers such as Boulez, Barraqué and Stockhausen, finds itself unadorned and to the forefront.

In a way that's the point with the Epiphanies of the Beyond.....
All those works you mention seem to cohere into a final grand synthesis, where birdsong, prayer and apocalyptic appeal to the Universe and the Universal become a final, mortally-aware Offertorium.......

To me there are no truly bad recordings here (at least the ones I've heard: the Cambreling was severely criticised by Arnold Whittal and Roger Nichols (G., 10/93, 11/93), for being ponderous and earthbound - at 76' it looks very slow...10' or 15' beyond most others) so I never sought it out)....

I'm surprised if someone calls Rattle or Chung "sugary" ....just a little restrained, a little more moulded, perhaps... nor do I hear the excerpts I've tried on Qobuz from Wit as dry.... rather - fresh, exciting, spontaneous.....(though - the birdsong not always as confidently voiced as later efforts including Rattle...)
From Nagano on, it seems the music itself has been intensely inspiring to its performers, and no wonder, if they grasp its significance....

But I'd always offer up the VPO/Metzmacher as the best "entry point".... the awesome gateway to this remarkable visionary masterpiece...
(The VPO can stun you with adventurous rep sometimes - as they did with the Nørgård 7 & 8, with Oramo a few years ago...)