I'm sure this must have had a thread of its own on here at one time so I'm not going to discuss it too much, but one of the depressing parts about listening to music is falling out of love with pieces that used to knock you over. Maybe some people avoid this somehow, but for me there are some works that I've burned out on, but used to love, and keep hoping I'll regain my enthusiasm for them.
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Yes indeed…. Same here.Originally posted by Darkbloom View Post"...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
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I have definitely fallen out of and back in love with Turangalîla a few times over the years. What I can’t get along with is versions that gild the pudding or overegg the lily. There’s so much stuff in there that for me playing it relatively straight is the only way to stop it turning utterly overblown. Messiaen is partly to blame in my book, demanding more and more extremes in the interpretation over the years and eventually writing them into the score.
The performance I saw with the Venezuelans and a pianist I will not mention was an excellent example of what not to do. Of course a youth orchestra is always at risk of the playing getting a bit look-at-me-Mum, emphasising everything and therefore nothing. The pianist absolutely did not help. I forget whether it was Boulez or Stravinsky or someone else who characterised the piano part as raking the keyboard from top to bottom and back again. I never understood that criticism until that performance.
On the other hand I always enjoy the very earliest recordings by Désormière and Rosbaud where they have no damn idea what is going on and therefore don’t need to emphasise the amazingness of anything. The statue and flower themes aren’t too slow, the fast stuff isn’t too fast, nothing gets bogged down or skated over, and even the ondes Martenot back then (played by Ginette Martenot) sounded otherworldly rather than just saccharine. Of course the audio side is what it is, but the recentish Janowski does a fine job of recreating that sort of atmosphere in a more modern sound.Comment
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What a lovely story.Thank you, Nick..Originally posted by Nick Armstrong View Post
One of my most treasured musical encounters was an apéritif with him and all the parish ‘great & good’ at La Trinité in Paris after he’d played the organ at the Palm Sunday Mass - concluding with a 20 minute improvisation!
I was able to chat with him and he signed a score of L’Ascension for an organist friend of mine - and a CD of same, for me…
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