Mussorgsky and his French Mussorgsky’s masterpiece is coupled here MUSSORGSKY • MESSIAEN • RAVEL compositional descendants with works by Ravel and Messiaen – an inspired choice, as both of these composers were One of the pinnacles of nineteenth-century indebted to the innovations of their Russian pianism, Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an predecessor. Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) first Exhibition (1874) broke new frontiers in its writing heard the music of the ‘Five’ at the Paris Universal Pictures at an Exhibition Miroirs for the piano through its use of ringing bell-like Exhibitions of 1889 and 1900 and through Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) sonorities, dramatic juxtaposition of registers them discovered a way of composing concerned 1 Promenade I [1.26] y Noctuelles [4.58] and dynamics, its approach to resonance, with colour and texture as well as with new 2 Gnomus [2.19] u Oiseaux tristes [3.47] percussive octaves and rapid hand-alternations, approaches to harmony, melody and form. 3 Promenade II [0.54] i Une barque sur l’océan [6.38] and sheer grandeur of sound. Introducing While his orchestral song-cycle Shéhérazade 4 The Old Castle [4.30] o Alborada del gracioso [6.52] new ideas about virtuosity that owe much to (1903) epitomises his ‘Russian’ years, Miroirs 5 Promenade III [0.31] p La Vallée des cloches [5.32] orchestral thinking in the ways the full range (1905) acknowledges Mussorgsky in its use of 6 Tuileries [1.00] of the piano’s tone-colours are explored, this intervallic relationships linking each movement 7 Bydło [2.52] a Cantéyodjayâ [12.22] most gargantuan of works requires immense as well as in presenting a succession of ‘images’ 8 Promenade IV [0.40] Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) stamina through combining great finger akin to the sequence of paintings evoked in 9 Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks [1.11] dexterity with unbridled power. A member of Pictures at an Exhibition. Like Mussorgsky, 0 Samuel Goldberg und Schmuyle [2.28] Total timings: [73.18] the compositional group known as the ‘Mighty Ravel approaches the piano from the point of q Promenade V [1.27] Handful’ or the ‘Five’ along with his Russian view of a virtuoso orchestrator, while achieving w The Market Place at Limoges [1.22] compatriots Rimsky-Korsakov, Balakirev, Borodin a pianism that is both virtuosic and entirely e Catacombs: Con mortuis in lingua mortua [3.44] and Cui, Mussorgsky (1839-1881) also innovated idiomatic. Miroirs also embraces a more r The Hut on Hen’s Legs of the Baba-Yaga [3.13] musically, not only through his angular melodies discreet Russian reference: each of the five t The Great Gate of Kiev [5.32] inspired by Russian folk-music, ostinatos movements is dedicated to a member of ‘Les and stark harmonic dissonances, but also in Apaches’, a group of like-minded thinkers defining a radical new approach to large- brought together by Ravel who shared mutual scale structure that is both non-developmental enthusiasms for the music of the Russian and sectional. Defining the dawn of Modernism, ‘Five’: the poet Léon-Paul Fargue, the pianist PETER DONOHOE PIANO this work influenced generations of composers in Ricardo Viñes, the painter Paul Sordes, the the twentieth century, especially those in France. writer Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi, and the www.signumrecords.com - 3 - composer Maurice Delage. Ravel’s deep pianistic characters. Far from being Impressionist movement’s accompaniment figures provide the intervals, the quartal harmony established admiration for Mussorgsky was later enshrined – a movement with which Ravel had little real melodic stimulus for ‘Une barque sur l’océan’ here became one of Ravel’s most distinctive in his orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition, affiliation –the ‘Mirrors’ of the title suggests (‘A Boat on the Ocean’), a more extrovert movement stylistic features. completed in 1922. more Symbolist associations in that the brimming with shimmering arpeggiations, rapid individual pieces explore ambiguities between surging crescendos and effects of resonance Written for the pianist Yvonne Loriod, with whom Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) acknowledged supposed reality and ‘reflected’ simulation. exploiting the full register of the piano. Miroirs, Peter Donohoe studied in Paris, Cantéyodjayâ the importance of Mussorgsky on his Ravel was particularly fascinated by a line from like most of Ravel’s piano works, was conceived (1948) was first performed at the Concerts compositional development in his writings, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: ‘the eye sees not for his preferred Erard piano which had a du Domaine Musical in 1954. With this highly including Technique de mon langage musical itself, but by reflection, by some other things.’ lighter, shallower touch than either the Pleyel energetic piece Messiaen embarked on a period (1944) and his posthumously published Traité or Austro-German instruments. This facilitated of stylistic experimentation that followed de rythme, de colour et d’ornithologie (1995). The first movement ‘Noctuelles’ (‘Night Moths’) the performance of swirling figurations, completion of his gargantuan Turangalîla- While he particularly revered the opera Boris relates to a prose poem by Léon-Paul Fargue in glissandos and rapidly repeated notes, the Symphonie. An unusually non-descriptive work for Godunov, from which he derived several of which insects flutter like fairies in a magical latter being most notoriously exploited in the Messiaen, without religious references or bird- his distinctive modes and chords, allusions garden redolent of that later evoked by Ravel supremely virtuosic ‘Alborada del gracioso’ song, Cantéyodjayâ is about musical process to Pictures at an Exhibition infuse sections of in L’Enfant et les sortilèges. Highly chromatic, (‘Dawn Song of the Jester’). An evocation of the and is constructed as a mosaic-like collage in his great piano cycles of the 1940s, Visions de the piece shimmers with delicately rapid traditional Spanish song of dawn intended to which a jaunty rhythmic refrain is juxtaposed l’Amen and Vingt Regards sur L’Enfant-Jésus, arpeggiations, eventually interrupted by a wake lovers after a night of ecstasy, the song with a multiplicity of contrasting ideas, many in their evocations of bell-sonorities, use of tolling bell in a more doleful middle section. A itself occurs in the sultry central section, which of which are re-workings from Turangalîla. resonance and grandeur of expression as well line from the same poem alluding to nocturnal is framed by a vigorous and rhythmically While representing something new in Messiaen’s as in more intimate aspects of the pianism. birdsong also inspired the second piece ‘Oiseaux percussive Spanish dance. Ravel later output, this collage-principle owes much to Messiaen also deeply admired Ravel whose tristes’ (‘Melancholy Birds’). Here Ravel resumes orchestrated the piece. The final movement Mussorgsky’s Pictures as well as to Debussy’s music, like that of Mussorgsky, was central to the idea of tolling, bell-like repeated notes, ‘Vallée des cloches’ (‘Valley of Bells’) returns ballet Jeux where contrasted and related his teaching at the Paris Conservatoire. juxtaposed with evocations of imagined birdsong, to the haunting mood of longing that ideas follow each other as a chain of different (Messiaen’s analyses of Ravel’s piano music while raising the curtain on a new harmonic characterises the set as a whole, and features coloured beads. Although aspects of Sonata- have since been published.) vocabulary infused with parallelisms, ostinatos, the tolling of bells in a manner that anticipates and Rondo-form are embedded in the chords of fifths, fourths, added ninths, elevenths ‘Le Gibet’ in Gaspard de la nuit, while the work, the piece unfolds by repetition and Completed in 1905 and first performed by and thirteenths, along with piquant dissonances oscillating repeated-note figuration of the alternation more than true development. Like Ricardo Viñes in 1906, Miroirs comprises a set that elude any real sense of key in a mood opening anticipates ‘Ondine’. Exploring the the many pseudo-Sanskrit words sprinkled of five pieces evoking contrasting moods and of mournful longing. The intervals of the harmonic and melodic qualities of fourth throughout the score, the title is Messiaen’s - 4 - - 5 - own Franco-Sanskrit invention – a cipher for a memorial exhibition of Hartmann’s paintings, gnome running clumsily on crooked legs whose Following the fifth and final statement of the the Indian rhythms that abound in the music. which took place in the spring of 1874 at the faltering movements have much in common ‘Promenade’, a lighter mood returns with ‘The Of the several slower sections in the work, Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg. with Ravel’s later depiction of ‘Scarbo’ in Market Place at Limoges’. Another scherzo two are entitled ‘Alba’ in reference both to the Soon after, Mussorgsky decided to immortalise Gaspard de la nuit. While ‘The Old Castle’ movement, we return to France where Hartmann’s dawn love-song of the Troubadours and the love the memory of his late friend by composing a was inspired by Hartmann’s watercolour of a painting depicts the bustle of the market themes in Messiaen’s so-called ‘Tristan’ works multi-movement work for solo piano in which medieval Italian fortress in front of which a and women gossiping busily. The climax of of the 1940s; here the percussive clusters in each piece would be a musical representation minstrel is shown singing, the mood is one of the movement is interrupted by ‘Catacombs’, the bass are borrowed from the ‘Princess de of paintings from the exhibition. Pictures at quintessential dolorous Russian lamentation. one of the most extraordinary sections of the Bali’ movement from Jolivet’s Mana – a work an Exhibition was composed in a white heat of Distant locations – from a Russian perspective work where the momentum comes to a sudden Messiaen deeply admired.