Review: Messiaen shimmers

Tuesday, 12 July 2016, 10:22 am
Article: Max Rashbrooke

Illuminations
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Friday, July 8
Reviewer: Max Rashbrooke

So far this year I’ve been slightly underwhelmed by some of the NZSO’s programmes – but not last Friday night, when they turned in a triumphant performance of Olivier Messiaen’s colossal Eclairs sur l’au-dela (Illuminations of the Beyond).

The final major work of the great 20th century composer, Eclairs is a summation of a lifetime of writing. It features all Messiaen’s obsessions, including bird songs and Catholic motifs. It’s also long – well over an hour – and requires so many performers (128) that they barely all fit on the stage.

The work, split into 11 parts, shifts sharply in tone and colour, going from blazing trumpets to fluttering birdsong, and the NZSO, bulked up with the New Zealand Youth Orchestra, responded with sensitive, committed playing. As you’d expect, the woodwinds shone, especially in the movement entitled ‘Various Birds in the Tree of Life’, a controlled cacophony of twittering and trilling.

The strings were wonderful, too; you don’t think of them as the stars of a piece like this, but they seemed to respond to the lyrical drive of guest conductor Andrew Davis, producing long and meditative strands of sound. They were especially good in ‘The Chosen Ones Marked with a Seal’ and the closing movement, ‘Christ, Light of Paradise’.

The only movement that didn’t work for me was ‘The Seven Angels with the Seven Trumpets’, even though Davis had highlighted it in his pre-concert speech as something awe-inspiring. I didn’t feel moved by its power or by the great blasts of brass; possibly because Davis took the whole work at a relatively sedate tempo, this movement seemed lacking in energy.

But that’s a small quibble for what was overall a performance of great sensitivity and variety. Messiaen described Eclairs as his way of imagining what might lie behind the great curtain of death, the revelations coming in a series of lightning flashes – and that was exactly how it felt on Friday night.

© Scoop Media

Max Rashbrooke

Journalist

Max Rashbrooke is a journalist and author working in Wellington, New Zealand, where he writes about politics, finance and social issues.

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