Thursday evening at Paul Hall, the ACJW Ensemble gave a recital of twentieth century works by Toru Takemitsu, Maurice Ravel and Olivier Messiaen. In spite of the bitter cold in New York City, the house was filled to capacity for this fabulous program.
The evening began with Takemitsu's And then I knew 'twas wind (1992). Though Takemitsu is Japan's best known composer, his music, a mixture of Western and Japanese traditions, cannot easily be categorized. One must look to the composer's personal background in order to understand his conflicted feelings towards his own country's traditions. Certainly, it would have been traumatic for any sensitive young man to have been drafted by the militaristic authorities at only age 14, most especially in 1944 when it must have been clear to everyone that Japan would eventually lose the war. Takemitsu himself described the experience as "extremely bitter." In reaction, the composer for many years wanted nothing to do with Japanese music. Instead, he co-founded the avant-garde group Jikken Kōbō that explored multimedia presentations as he himself experimented as early as 1948 with electronic music. He was also deeply influenced by the work of Western iconoclasts such as John Cage. It was only after he had already become famous with his 1957 Requiem for Strings that Takemitsu was first exposed to Japanese music and began to incorporate elements of that tradition into his own oeuvre.
The present piece was accordingly influenced by both Western and Eastern traditions, but particularly by the work of Debussy. It contained the same instrumentation as the French composer's late chamber piece, the Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp (1915) and not only made reference throughout to that earlier work but was actually written to be played alongside it. The title itself was taken from a poem by Emily Dickinson. The one-movement work was generally meditative and had a gentle air. Although the program notes pointed out elements of the Japanese tradition within the piece, such as free rhythm and the use of unpitched sounds, these could not so easily be discerned.
The next work was more familiar - Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Cello (1920-1922). Like Takemitsu, Ravel was something of an outsider to the musical establishment. In the the French composer's case, this was the result of having unfairly been denied the Paris Conservatoire's Prix de Rome five times in a row. After that snub, Ravel turned his back on the Conservatoire and joined the Apaches, an informal group of artists that also included Stravinsky and Falla.
The first movement of the present sonata was written in response to a request made by La Revue musicale, a publication only recently founded by Henri Prunières. The paper had asked several select composers to write works in tribute to the recently deceased Debussy for a special supplement it intended to publish. Ravel's sonata has not much to do with Debussy's work, however, as that of Kodály, most particularly that composer's Duo for Violin and Cello written in 1914, only six years before. Throughout Ravel's four-movement piece, constant references to Hungarian folk and dance music are plainly audible. The work quickly evolves into an intense, at times almost minimalist, dialog between the two stringed instruments that is utterly gripping to hear.
After intermission, the program concluded with Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1940-1941) for piano, clarinet, violin and cello. Without doubt, few pieces of music have so dramatic an origin as this can boast. Briefly, Messiaen was captured while serving France during World War II and sent to a POW camp in Poland where he became acquainted with three other prisoners who were also musicians. The composer then wrote a piece in eight movements that the four could perform together. Messiaen was obviously limited in his choice of available instruments, but Hindemith had previously composed in 1938 a work for the same combination. The quartet was actually premiered at the camp - outdoors and in the rain - with both prisoners and guards in attendance, all of whom gave it an enthusiastic reception. There was, unfortunately, a disappointing sequel to this feel-good story. The guard, Carl-Albert Brüll, who had contrived to give the musicians rehearsal time and later forged documents for their release, traveled to Paris and attempted to meet with Messiaen after the war had ended but was rebuffed and sent away without having even seen the man for whom he had done so much. Why Messiaen displayed such ingratitude has never been satisfactorily explained.
No matter how indecipherable Messiaen's subsequent behavior may have been, the quartet he created while imprisoned proved a masterpiece and was definitely the highlight of this recital. Unlike most chamber works, the instruments did not always play in unison but often broke off into solos or pairs. The music itself was ethereal and conveyed a sense of spirituality. The ACJW musicians who performed it did so in an accomplished style. I was especially impressed by the playing of pianist Michael James Smith who displayed enormous skill in performing even the softest passages.
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