Carnegie Hall: Gustavo Dudamel Conducts Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie

After having gone on Thursday to Carnegie Hall to hear the Opening Night concert, I returned on Saturday evening to hear another great performance by Gustavo Dudamel and the outstanding Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar.  This time there was only work on the program - the Turangalîla-Symphonie by the French composer Olivier Messiaen.

The Turangalîla is a massive symphonic work composed over a two year period from 1946 to 1948 and then revised in 1990 two years before the composer's death.  At the time of the original composition, Messiaen was at the height of his powers.  Only a few years before, while being held prisoner during World War II, he had written his best known work, Quatuor pour la fin du temps.  The commission for the present work from Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra was an acknowledgement of his growing international reputation.  Ironically, though it was Koussevitzky who had given Messiaen the commission, he was too ill to conduct it himself and the task fortuitously fell instead to his protege Leonard Bernstein.

The symphony, which contains ten distinct movements and runs about 75 minutes in length, is massive in every sense of the word, not least of all in its instrumentation.  It includes not only the usual orchestral instruments but a wide variety of percussive instruments - including vibraphone, glockenspiels, wood blocks, tambourine, maracas and tubular bells - as well as a solo piano and ondes Martenot.  Needless to say, leading such an immense orchestra is a challenge to any conductor.

Messiaen, no matter how brilliant a composer, could be quite tiresome in describing the sources of his inspiration especially when they referred to his Christian faith.  His description of the Turangalîla, however, is refreshingly simple.  When questioned, he is quoted as having said only, "It's a love song."  It was only after he had completed the work that he gave it its tongue twister of a name and provided titles to the four main themes.  There are other sources as well, though, and some of them are quite surprising.  The Turangalîla II movement, for example, was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum."

Though the Turangalîla is a symphonic work, it stands outside the Western tradition inherited from Haydn and Beethoven.  There is none of the expected development or recapitulation.  To this end, the program notes quote Edward Said:

"Whereas the main Western musical tradition by and large relies upon development, control, inventiveness, and rhythm in the service of logical control, Messiaen's music is consciously at some eccentric distance from these characteristics.  Instead his work emphasizes repetition and stasis..."

Or, as Pierre Boulez, more succinctly put it: "Messiaen doesn't compose, he juxtaposes."

While one cannot discount the theoretical aspect of this music (it was a milestone in the development of post-war serialism), there was also an emotional side to the work's composition.  Shortly after Messiaen had taken on a professorship at the Paris Conservatoire, he had fallen in love with a much younger student, Yvonne Loriod.  By the time he came to write the present symphony, he had already composed in 1943 Visions de l'Amen which he had then premiered with himself and Loriod playing the two piano parts.  Considering the prominence given the piano part (played by Loriod at the premiere) and that of the ondes Martenot (played by Loriod's sister Jeanne) in rhe Turangalîla as well as Messiaen's description of the work as a love song, it's possible to see his romantic attachment as the driving force behind the work's completion.

As one might expect, the experience of hearing such an immense work, when properly performed and conducted, is overwhelming.  When I had heard Dudamel and the Orquesta on Thursday evening, it had been primarily a festive occasion in which the enjoyment of the audience had been the main concern.  Saturday evening's performance of so complex a work as the Turangalîla was a much greater test for both conductor and ensemble.  They both handled their task superlatively, as did soloist Jean-Yves Thibaudet on the extremely demanding piano part.  The soloist on the ondes Martenot was Cynthia Millar.