BaL 26.05.12/25.02.23 - Messiaen: Turangalila Symphony

[BBMmk2]

Both top class recordings to!!Hmm I have three!(Gawd!)

[aeolium]

In case people are wondering why I have resurrected a two and a half year old BaL thread on this work, it is because searching around for recordings on the internet of R3's Interpretations on Record programme I found this (sound not great):

http://5against4.com/audio/_Messiaen,Olivier/1996-07-28_Interpretations_on_Record_-_Turangalila-Symphonie.mp3

I remember editions of IoR which featured a panel discussing various recordings, but in this case it is more like a straightforward BaL in which the wonderful Michael Oliver considered the versions available in 1996. What impressed me was - apart from the clear, elegant prose and the quality of MO's voice - the level of detail given to consideration of the recordings, the degree of research into performance history, the elucidation about the work. It's true that there were not very many versions for MO to review at that time, but it seems to me that whatever your view of MO's judgements about the recordings, it was a very thorough piece of work, not least because the programme lasts 70 minutes (compared with e.g. 40 minutes for today's BaL on Mozart's Entführung). I still thought the panel discussion format was good, though I cannot discover any examples available to listen to, but this shows that the BaL format can still be effective.

[I hope I am not breaking any copyright rules by linking to this IoR broadcast]

[amateur51]

In case people are wondering why I have resurrected a two and a half year old BaL thread on this work, it is because searching around for recordings on the internet of R3's Interpretations on Record programme I found this (sound not great):

http://5against4.com/audio/_Messiaen,Olivier/1996-07-28_Interpretations_on_Record_-_Turangalila-Symphonie.mp3

I remember editions of IoR which featured a panel discussing various recordings, but in this case it is more like a straightforward BaL in which the wonderful Michael Oliver considered the versions available in 1996. What impressed me was - apart from the clear, elegant prose and the quality of MO's voice - the level of detail given to consideration of the recordings, the degree of research into performance history, the elucidation about the work. It's true that there were not very many versions for MO to review at that time, but it seems to me that whatever your view of MO's judgements about the recordings, it was a very thorough piece of work, not least because the programme lasts 70 minutes (compared with e.g. 40 minutes for today's BaL on Mozart's Entführung). I still thought the panel discussion format was good, though I cannot discover any examples available to listen to, but this shows that the BaL format can still be effective.

[I hope I am not breaking any copyright rules by linking to this IoR broadcast]

A miraculous find aeolium! Many thanks. You're right on every count

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Another resurrected work for BaL, but this time around, there are perhaps enough new versions to justify another review.

The new versions are highlighted in blue in the opening post.

[Bryn]

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/feb/23/from--the-archive-messiaen-turangalila-review-1953-eric-blom

[RichardB]

https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...1953-eric-blom

"... a stream of revoltingly shuddering and viscid sounds." Makes it sound even better than it is!

[Master Jacques]

"... a stream of revoltingly shuddering and viscid sounds." Makes it sound even better than it is!

Yes indeed - both Blom and Cardus (just about readable at the foot of the article reprint) actually describe the piece vividly. Cardus finishes with, "if a modern audience can stand Messiaen, it can stand anything", which might prompt an interesting essay by itself!

[Bryn]

Surprised to note that the Le Roux recording is listed as download/streaming only (I have at least three different CD versions of that release, plus two LP sets, the Vega and the much later Decca) I went a-Googling, only to confirm the situation (at least as far as individual discs are concerned). I then noted that one of the two QOBUZ options was shown as having been released in 2019. Given that none of the earlier digitizations has been at all well done, I will give it a try, later on, today. It is cited as being a Decca release. Since their LP version, mentioned above, was a great improvement on the Vega discs I have, I have my fingers crossed.

[Pulcinella]

Yes indeed - both Blom and Cardus (just about readable at the foot of the article reprint) actually describe the piece vividly. Cardus finishes with, "if a modern audience can stand Messiaen, it can stand anything", which might prompt an interesting essay by itself!

In Simon Preston's time at Christ Church Oxford, a blast of Messiaen on the new organ he had installed there would usually clear the building pretty quickly at the end of a service, iirc!

[Bryn]

In Simon Preston's time at Christ Church Oxford, a blast of Messiaen on the new organ he had installed there would usually clear the building pretty quickly at the end of a service, iirc!

C of E?

[Barbirollians]

Another ten years on BAL - do they consult their records of when a work was last done ? The K467 debacle suggests the opposite.

[Serial_Apologist]

"... a stream of revoltingly shuddering and viscid sounds." Makes it sound even better than it is!

Unfair as regards most Messiaen, but not Turangalîla, imo. "He seems jealous of the sonic boom" and "L'après-midi d'un super-faun" - two comments on the work from Stravinsky I remember.

[silvestrione]

https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...1953-eric-blom

Good old inimitable Neville Cardus! Gets much right, and written with wit and verve, presumably dashed off after the concert too. (I love lots of Messiaen, but find Turangilila hard to take, for much the reasons suggested!)

[jayne lee wilson]

Neville Cardus' very insightful book on the first five Mahler Symphonies was a vital revelation to my late-teen self; he was a gifted writer; but I'm afraid I find the 1954 piece on the Turangalîla lacking in almost any understanding, either instinctive or gained through experience of the work itself. It is what I might expect from a stuffily unresponsive English Gentleman Critic of the time. Ironically, you could find similar contemporary dismissals of Mahler in the reviews of other writers quite easily. (Eric Blom isn't much better).

I've always regarded it as a masterpiece on several levels, a highly inspired, stunningly elaborate, fiendishly-integrated one-off even in Messiaen's own oeuvre, but I must say it is emotionally draining and I could scarcely imagine listening to it twice in close succession, even across a few days (I often choose separate movements to listen to).
So even a limited comparative survey is beyond me. But I think the symphony is made that way; surely it is such an intense, all-embracing and enveloping experience that, heard complete, it should leave you a little dazed and (creatively) confused, hopefully elated, needing time to recover and reflect...

[RichardB]

I find the 1954 piece on the Turangalîla lacking in almost any understanding, either instinctive or gained through experience of the work itself. It is what I might expect from a stuffily unresponsive English Gentleman Critic of the time. Ironically, you could find similar contemporary dismissals of Mahler in the reviews of other writers quite easily. (Eric Blom isn't much better).

Quite. You don't have to look far in English music criticism at that time to find the assumption that modern music from the Continent (including Mahler of course) was all very well for Johnny Foreigner but it won't do around here, an attitude which still echoes in those innumerable reviews by Andrew Clements that begin something like "Composer X is regularly played on the Continent but his/her music is almost unknown in the UK".