Olivier Messiaen - L'Ascension; etc. (Paavo Järvi)

Information

Composer: Olivier Messiaen

1. Le Tombeau resplendissant
2. Les Offrandes oubliées, méditation symphonique
3. Un sourire
4. L'Ascension, quatre méditations symphoniques: I. Majesté du Christ demandant sa gloire à son Père
5. L'Ascension, quatre méditations symphoniques: II. Alléluias sereins d'une âme qui désire le ciel
6. L'Ascension, quatre méditations symphoniques: III. Alléluia sur la trompette, alléluia sur la cymbale
7. L'Ascension, quatre méditations symphoniques: IV. Prière du Christ montant vers son Père

Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich

Paavo Järvi, conductor

Date: 2019

Label: Alpha

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Review

The received wisdom is that Messiaen grew up at the keyboard, so to speak, but according to his teacher Marcel Dupré he never so much as set eyes on an organ console until the age of 18. Having won a first prize in composition at the Paris Conservatoire in 1930, he completed four major orchestral scores in four years. Paavo Järvi and Alpha have missed a trick by leaving out the third of them, the Hymne au Saint-Sacrament (1932), and replacing it with the composer’s late tribute to Mozart, Un sourire (1989), in a scrupulous studio account that in no way supersedes previous recordings directed by Jun Märkl (Naxos, 9/12) and Myung-Whun Chung (DG, 8/95).

Rather, it is the live performances of the prentice works that merit further attention. This is the first recording to do full justice to Le tombeau resplendissant, more accurately played than Chung, more imaginatively voiced than Märkl. The piece emerges not as an inferior sequel to Les offrandes oubliées but as a powerful and deeply personal symphonic poem in its own right, precociously establishing Messiaen’s orchestral voice for all the evident debts to Franck in form, Scriabin in harmony and Berlioz in orchestration – hardly negligible models to follow. It becomes understandable why the deeply private and secretive composer should have discouraged performances, having bared his soul and given vent to his anger over the death of his mother in both the work’s first and third sections and a written preface, helpfully printed in the booklet: ‘My youth is dead: it was I who killed it. Rage, where are you leading me?’ There’s nothing quite like it in the rest of Messiaen’s output.

Dukas taught him composition, and the influence of L’apprenti sorcier is writ large over the screeching violins and irresistible accelerando in the central panel of Les offrandes oubliées, where a similar expression of grief is subsumed in a crucifixion scene. Here and in the closing, serene depiction of celestial rapture there is a silky assurance that bodes promisingly for the relationship between the Zurich orchestra and their new director, as well as the new recording studio built in the basement of the Tonhalle.

L’Ascension is more subject to the vagaries of live recording – some questionable brass intonation in the opening movement, tangled textures in the Debussian tracery of the ‘Alléluias sereins’ – but again Järvi has the full measure of the piece. He sustains momentum and tension through some tricky, slow metronome marks and draws a sumptuously appointed weight of sound from the Tonhalle strings in the ecstatic ‘Prière du Christ montant a son Père’ while steering clear of both Stokowski’s showmanship and Chung’s ponderous solemnity. ‘One of my favourite works’, says Järvi in an enlightening booklet interview, and you can tell.

— Peter Quantrill

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Olivier Messiaen (10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist and teacher renowned for his highly original compositions. After studying at the Paris Conservatory with Dukas, Widor and Dupré, among others, he became organist at Sainte-Trinité in Paris in 1931. During World War II, he composed Quartet for the End of Time while imprisoned in Germany. As a teacher at the Paris Conservatory, he mentored leading composers such as Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen. His major works include Turangalîla-Symphonie, Catalogue d’oiseaux, and the opera St. François d’Assise.

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Paavo Järvi (born 30 December 1962 in Tallinn) is an Estonian-American conductor, and son of Neeme Järvi. He studied at the Curtis Institute of Music and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute with Leonard Bernstein among others. Järvi has held leadership roles with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris and NHK Symphony Orchestra. Since 2019, he has served as Chief Conductor of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich. He has recorded for major labels including Alpha Classics, RCA, Deutsche Grammophon, PENTATONE, Telarc, ECM, BIS and Virgin Records.

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