Prom 13: ‘From the Canyons to the Stars …’ - 28.07.19

[Bryn]

e-ticket in my iPhone wallet, hip-flask brimming with Jim Beam Double Oaked. Will mosey on down to to the bus stop about 18.30. So looking forward to this gig - the diamond in this year's festival, IMVHO (and not so long after the "The Rest Is Noise" festival performance).

We are blessed.

It's allright if you like that sort of thing, I suppose, which is why I collected my 'cloakroom ticket' at 9.00 a.m., then went back home. Now awaiting Service at Imperial College S.U.

[Joseph K]

I shall certainly be listening - one of the year's Highlights for me.

Opinion changed on Messiaen?

[sidneyfox]

It's allright if you like that sort of thing, I suppose, which is why I collected my 'cloakroom ticket' at 9.00 a.m., then went back home. Now awaiting Service at Imperial College S.U.

C'mon Bryn, you know I normally prom it. Just fancied a seat this time (remember, I risked getting beaten up by angry promenaders when I escorted you from your back of the hall standing position to a much more amenable position eight rows from the stage at the last time Messiaen's Turangalila was performed at the RAH )

[Serial_Apologist]

Opinion changed on Messiaen?

Not one of my favourite Messiaen works, tbh - a long journey to a final tonal resolution, but with too many spoilers on the way.

[sidneyfox]

a long journey to a final tonal resolution, but with too many spoilers on the way.

As Sir Paul tells us, focus on the technical stuff and you miss the creativity .......

[Serial_Apologist]

As Sir Paul tells us, focus on the technical stuff and you miss the creativity .......

Sir Paul is a great sauce of wisdom!

[Richard Barrett]

Not one of my favourite Messiaen works, tbh - a long journey to a final tonal resolution, but with too many spoilers on the way.

I think it really is my favourite Messiaen work though. I don't think Messiaen thought in terms of long journeys to final tonal resolutions, and I certainly don't hear it like that: it's a series of contemplations, whose shared/recurrent materials are incidental rather than central, and whose cumulative effect is brought about by many different means, harmony being only one of them.

[DracoM]

Nerve-wracking ppp solo opening for brass! But never a dull moment after that!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Opinion changed on Messiaen?

No - just another attempt to come closer to this composer. (I attended a performance of the work by the London Sinfonietta in the RFH in the early '90s - I think it's a work that might enable me to break through my dislike.)

[edashtav]

No - just another attempt to come closer to this composer. (I attended a performance of the work by the London Sinfonietta in the RFH in the early '90s - I think it's a work that might enable me to break through my dislike.)

Snap, I was in the audience that evening, too, Ferney. Much though I enjoyed it, I don't rank the work highly amongst Messaien's orchestral works.

[Richard Barrett]

Quite some negative/indifferent opinions on DCaE here. Ever since I first heard it (on the wireless in the mid-70s, confirmed by the Constant recording which emerged around the end of the 70s) it has seemed to me a distillation and at the same time an expansion of everything I find most attractive in Messiaen's music - the forms and the way they articulate time, the timbral imagination, the harmonic colours, the combination of simplicity and complexity, plus the sense of awe which I find more "accessible" in this piece since it's applied principally to the physical world rather than to theological concepts (of course Messiaen wouldn't have made that distinction!).

[Bryn]

I would not wish to put anyone of tuning in at 7 pm but I thought this Listening Service a right load of guff. Very much in the curate's egg category.

[jayne lee wilson]

Always a very big piece for me.... I love the "rawness" of its sonorities, the voices of nature whether birds or winds or rocks or sky...as RB says, it is a very physical work in so many resects.

Salonen and De Leeuw got me going, recently thanks to Bryn's recommending I found my way to the Constant on Erato (original CD issue too ).

[Bryn]

Quite some negative/indifferent opinions on DCaE here. Ever since I first heard it (on the wireless in the mid-70s, confirmed by the Constant recording which emerged around the end of the 70s) it has seemed to me a distillation and at the same time an expansion of everything I find most attractive in Messiaen's music - the forms and the way they articulate time, the timbral imagination, the harmonic colours, the combination of simplicity and complexity, plus the sense of awe which I find more "accessible" in this piece since it's applied principally to the physical world rather than to theological concepts (of course Messiaen wouldn't have made that distinction!).

I take it you are well aware that my tongue was securly cleft to my cheek when replying to the Don.

I share your admiration for the work.

[Bryn]

Always a very big piece for me.... I love the "rawness" of its sonorities, the voices of nature whether birds or winds or rocks or sky...as RB says, it is a very physical work in so many resects.

Salonen and De Leeuw got me going, recently thanks to Bryn's recommending I found my way to the Constant on Erato (original CD issue too ).

I think it may have been Mr. Barrett who was the principal advocate of the Constant. Not that I fail to concur with his opinion of it.