Philharmonie
Hans
Abrahamsen: let me tell you (2013)
Messiaen:
Éclairs
sur l’Au-Delà (1987-91)
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| Images: © Monika Karczmarczyk |
Written for Barbara Hannigan
and the Berlin Philharmonic, Hans Abrahamsen’s song-cycle, let me tell you, has garnered plentiful plaudits, including the
2016 Grawemeyer Prize. On a first hearing, it was not difficult to understand
why, even if – a matter of taste, no more than that – its neoromanticism became
for me at times a little wearing. For underlying a musical foreground whose somewhat
saccharine language verges on the reactionary, structure and finely honed
compositional craft are present and meaningful. The verbal text, drawn by the
composer from a novella by Paul Griffiths whose vocabulary is restricted to the
words spoken by Hamlet’s Ophelia,
serves its purpose well as a springboard for song, though I cannot say that makes
me eager to read the novella itself. There is, moreover, no doubting the work’s
vocal qualities, ranging from intriguing reinvention of the Monteverdian genere concitato to a genuinely
extraordinary relationship between soprano and instruments of similar or still
higher range, in which colours echo, pierce, and fuse. Hannigan’s response was
predictably outstanding, likewise the interplay between her voice and the LSO
players, especially woodwind, tuned percussion, and violins, wisely guided by
Simon Rattle. If I found a slight tentativeness to some of the playing in the
very first song, that was soon forgotten – and may have been more a matter of
adjustment to an acoustic very different from and far superior to the orchestra’s
Barbican home. This was a performance, as it was a work, amounting to
considerably more than the sum of its parts. And whilst I had my doubts during
the performance, evidently not shared by an enthusiastic audience, on
reflection I think the audience may well have been right.
It was Messiaen’s Éclairs sur l’Au-Delà that had been the
real attraction for me, though, and a fine performance indeed it turned out to
be. Even if I sometimes found myself missing the particular colours a French
orchestra might have brought to this music – the Paris Opéra orchestra on Myung
Whun Chung’s recording, for instance – there was again no doubting the all-round
excellence of the LSO here. If the work has ever been treated to superior
playing from massed flutes and percussion, I should be astonished; I doubt even
that any performance will have matched those players here. Certainly the LSO
wind brooked no dissent in the implacable, mystical opening ‘Apparition du
Christ glorieux’. One could imagine the music transcribed for organ, yet never
did the instruments imitate Messiaen’s beloved instrument; composer and
performers alike were far too skilled for that. Rattle handled the twin
imperatives of continuity and contrast in the ensuing ‘La constellation du
Sagittaire’ with palpable understanding, paving the way surely for the surprises,
even when one ‘knew’, of flute birdsong, superlatively despatched; mysterious
violin harmonics; and Indian rhythms. If I found ‘L’Oiseau-Lyre et la
Ville-Fiancée’ a little hard-driven – pretty much my sole cavil – it was
rhythmically tight and vivid throughout, percussion of all varieties typically
incisive. The apocalyptic cacophony of ‘Les élus marqués du sceau’ proved as
mysterious, as inscrutable, as anything in Stockhausen.
Inscrutable in a very different
way was the fifth movement, ‘Demeurer dans l’Amour’, the sweet ecstasy of its
violins, Turangalîla and indeed Tristan reimagined, an object lesson in communication
of sentiment without sentimentality. I was, moreover, fascinated to hear so
clear an invitation from Messiaen, harmony notwithstanding, to listen
intervallically: just as keen, just as meaningful as in the music of some forty
years earlier. There was no doubting that this was the true heart, in more than
one sense, of the work, balanced as it was by apocalyptic fervour on its other
side, in ‘Les sept Anges aus sept trompettes’. Gareth Davies’s flute solo in ‘Et
Dieu essuiera toute larme de leurs yeux’ was, to put it simply, perfectly
judged.
Then came ‘Les étoiles et la
Gloire’: the apocalypse once again, terrifying in that this might have been truly
be the work of God or the Devil – and how could we know? Three sets of tubular
bells (and three players), xylophone, glockenspiel, marimba, and so much else:
a second heart, perhaps, to the work, even a heart of darkness. This listener emerged
from it awestruck, as, in quite a different way, he did from the veritable dawn
chorus of ‘Plusieus oiseaux des arbres de Vie’, woodwind onstage and beyond (au-delà?)
There was no need for visibility in ‘Le chemin d I’Invisible’ when music
rendered whoever He was so palpably present. The sense of completion, not just
of this work, but (almost) of Messiaen’s musical life was keen in ‘Le Christ,
lumière du Paradis’. Its kinship, from the opening chord, with the final
movement of the early L’Ascension, ‘Prière
du Christ montant vers son Père’, was clear, as was the reality that this was a
different, if related, path to be taken. There was surely much theology as well
as music in that thought – and prayer – alone. This was unquestionably –
Messiaen tends no more to questioning than does Bach – a blessed, luminous, and
in every sense sweet assurance.
