Olivier Messiaen saw music as coloured time. He liked big gestures - from the
"brothel music" of Turangalila Symphony to the ecstatic tranquillity
of Visions from Beyond, this was a composer given to structures and sounds of
overwhelming force articulated over broad time-spans, often encompassing sounds
from the Orient, Arcadia, the natural world and the Roman Catholic Church. La
Nativité du Seigneur - a monumental work for solo organ lasting just under
an hour, divided into nine tableaux on the theme of the Nativity - without doubt
exemplifies this penchant for eclectic grandeur.
However, those comments are nothing if not misleading - La Nativité is
no mere chaos of delight. Messiaen's tonal palate is both generous, breath taking
and yet always coherent - encompassing both traditional and synthetic modality,
atonality and diatonicsm. Structurally this piece poses problems: the opening
tableaux appear overly weighty if not rhetorically self-indulgent. However the
piece, as a whole, is unified and tightly woven.
James Lancelot's performance of La
Nativité du Seigneur in Durham Cathedral early this January was flawless
and authoritative - if not one of the best concerts this year. Messiaen's unique
skills as an organist are evinced by the unusual, yet practical, demands placed
upon the soloist, not just in terms of dexterity but also with regards to matters
of registration and timbral sensitivity - all of which we met amply. Although
the opening passages were a touch "flat" Lancelot's judicious sense
of pacing gave the pyrotechnics of the last movement an extra frisson of excitement.
Ignoring the matter of the organist's mendacious, if genuine, programme note
I have no complaints.
Douglas Bertram