Review Details
A TRIBUTE TO MESSIAEN DR FLORIAN WILKES
Alsn Cooper
22 October 2008
KING’S COLLEGE CHAPEL
Dr Florian Wilkes of St. Hedwig’s Cathedral, Berlin gave the third recital in the series of events celebrating the life and work of the unique French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992). The present series of lectures, concerts and workshops is presented in collaboration with the Cathedral Church of St. Machar and also falls under the remit of the s-o-u-n-d Festival 2008.
This was the second recital dealing with the composer’s earlier output and consisted of three of his most celebrated works: Apparition de l’Église éternelle (1932), the fourth part of his Livre d’Orgue entitled Chants d’oiseaux (1951) and Les Corps glorieux (1939).
Messiaen was a musical prodigy entering the Conservatoire at the age of eleven. There would seem to be a vast chasm in musical style and taste between Dukas, Widor and Marcel Dupré on the one hand and Boulez, Stockhausen and Xenakis on the other, yet one person links them together and that is Messiaen. The first three were among his teachers at the Conservatoire; the second three were among his pupils.
There is no question however that Messiaen rather than being an intermediary between these two musical worlds is a completely unique figure in music. Although his music lies firmly within the long tradition of French composers for organ in the importance of the sounds and timbres which he exploits, nothing before or after him sounds quite the same. That was the first thing that struck me when listening to Dr Florian Wilkes as he played some of Messiaen’s most genuinely idiosyncratic music.
Messiaen was first and foremost an organist and it was for this instrument, or should I say those many instruments that he composed his finest pieces. Messiaen’s organ at L’Église de la Sainte-Trinité in Paris was an 1858 Cavaillé-Coll. Florian Wilkes gave his first recital of Messiaen’s music on the Father Willis instrument in St Machar’s Cathedral while the instrument on which he played the current recital was the Aubertin in King’s College Chapel. I wonder what Messiaen himself would have made of it.
It seemed to me that after listening to several performances of Apparition de l’Église éternelle before setting off for the concert, mostly played on instruments by Cavaillé-Coll, that Dr Wilkes was taking the piece at a comparatively brisk pace and perhaps losing some of the portentous quality of the music. On the other hand, his tempo allied to the clear transparent sound of the Aubertin Organ made far more musical sense of this piece. The repeated undercurrents in the pedals came through much more clearly and bound the music together in a thoroughly shapely and satisfying way. The rich chords were therefore carried forward by this sense of impetus and the arc of the music became more apparent.
The characteristic stops of the Aubertin also added spice to the birdsongs of Chants d’oiseaux. I myself am not familiar enough with birdsong to tell whether the songs of blackbird, robin, song thrush and nightingale are accurate but what the French would call les rythmes saccadées of the songs with the tiny pauses in their phrasing sounded convincing to me. What splendid playing!
The final section of the recital was the most fulsome, a real tour de force of organ playing. This was Les Corps glorieux with its seven extended sections. The opening unison section followed on beautifully from the Chants d’oiseaux and found an echo later in the music of L’ange aux parfums. The repetition of rhythm and harmony in the ostinatos of Les eaux de la grace were somehow hypnotic and intoxicating while the deep pedals and stabbing chords at the opening of Combat de la mort et de la vie were alarming. The final sections of the work had a more formal sense of structure leading to a stunning conclusion that left the audience quite breathless but they soon recovered enough to give Florian Wilkes a resounding ovation. I would be fascinated to know what the many young members of the large audience thought of this recital.