Festival of Friendship : George Benjamin : A Duet and a Dream

George Benjamin conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, London on 5 March, with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, in Olivier Messiaen Le merle bleu and Benjamin Duet for Piano and Orchestra, Oliver Knussen Choral, Janáček Sinfonietta and Benjamin Dream of the Song. Interesting programme with obvious connections and some more provocative.

This concert celebrates that special bond between Benjamin, Aimard and Knussen, whose presence will be felt by many, and that of Messiaen, too.  Aimard was one of Messiaen's "sons", studying with Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod aged 12, so close to the composer he was like family.  Benjamin joined Messiaen circles when he was 16, hence their special relationship.  At Aldeburgh, and for decades before, Aimard, Benjamin and Oliver Knussen were stalwarts. I remeber an occasion when Knussen was driving Benjamin to London, waved off by friends saying "No stopping off at Little Chef on the way". Little Chef too is now long gone.

A very thoughtful choice as introduction, with Knussen's Choral (op 8, 1970-72). Choral isn't chorale, so much as an exercise in using instruments as vouces operating as a small choir.  It dispenses with high strings altogether. Four double basses march against counter processions of trumpets, horns and mournful trombones. Flutes and percussion cry out against the dirge. Eventually the different parts of the orchestra coalesce, not in unison, but in chorus.  More "chorus" in Messiaen's Le merle bleu No 3 from Book 1 of  the Catalogue des Oiseaux, written for Mme. Loriod.  Aimard would have heard her playing this, with the composer himself listening. He understands it thoroughly "from source". At Aldeburgh he performed the whole series at the right times of the day and night.  I woke in time  to greet the dawn chorus at 3 am. This consideration is important as it enhances the atmosphere, since Messiaen sought to recreate the whole environment from which the birds come. Le merle bleu is one of the more exotic sections,with scintillating moments of display, yet joyously natural, since birds sing from sheer exuberance.

More congeniality : Benjamin's Duet for Piano and Orchestra (2008) which Aimard premiered at the Lucerne Festival. Benjain has written "With its vast range and virtuosic capacities the piano is in its own right almost the equivalent of an orchestra. So this Duet is an encounter between two equal partners, partners whose capacities, however, diverge in numerous essential ways. The piano can traverse over seven octaves with the greatest ease and, with the help of the sustaining pedal, accumulate harmonies containing literally dozens of notes. These are feats with which no orchestral instrument can compete. And yet every note of the piano begins to die away immediately after being struck, a characteristic so different from the legato capacities of string and wind instruments. I have attempted to cross the divide between the soloist and the orchestra by finding compatible areas between them, specifically by dividing the piano into a few distinct registers with timbral equivalents in the orchestra. At the same time the piano remains an alien figure in the orchestral landscape and often treads an independent path through instrumental textures that can seem intentionally oblivious of it. The orchestra employed is somewhat reduced, above all by the absence of violins. A certain prominence is given to the piano's nearest relatives in tuned percussion and, especially, the harp".

Of the UK premiere in 2010, I wrote "It's a new departure for Benjamin, his first piece for piano and orchestra. Benjamin’s own notes describe it succinctly. “The piano has an enormous pitch compass and is capable of accumulating complex resonating harmonies, but each note begins to decay as soon as it it is sounded. On the other hand, stringed and wind instruments can sustain and mould their notes after the initial attack”. Thus Benjamin tries to find common ground, restricting the pitch range of the piano, avoiding the higher registers where decay occurs quickly. Percussion, harp and pizzicato create attenuated sounds that meet the piano on its own ground. The piano part isn’t elaborately flamboyant: rather it’s spare, single notes occurring in series, like flurries. It evoked the movement of birds – short, quick jerks expanding into flourish as they take flight. Duet for piano and Orchestra is a different kind of concertante, where soloist and orchestra don’t interact in the usual way, but observe each other, so to speak. Then, with a punchy crescendo, it’s over. Benjamin’s music often sounds pointilliste, like detailed embroidery, but here there’s sharpness in design, and clarity of direction. Piano and orchestra warily stalk each other's moves, so Duet is a kind of furtive, circulating dance."  Not all so different from birds calling out to each other.

Though the concerts ends with Janáček Sinfonietta  the big draw for me will be Benjamin's  Dream of the Song.  Benjamin uses texts from three poets, two of whom lived in Granada, the jewel of Islamic civilzation, where education, art and philosophy were honoured.  Samuel Hanagid (993-1056) and  Solomon ibn Gabirol (d. approx 1050) were Talmudic scholars but also fluent in Arabic, for this was a time when Granada was a haven of tolerance in a Europe plagued with prejudice. Benjamin's third poet is Federico García Lorca, the radical modernist  who was assassinated by fascist forces in Granada in 1936.  Songs silenced across the centuries: chances are that the "Dream" Benjamin is referring to is no reverie.

Significantly Benjamin blends and combines the poems into a seamless flow.Strange rustling bell sounds and a cry that sounds like the call of a mullah; "Naked" sings the counter-tenor, the word broken into fragments but reiterated. An epigrammatic opening, opening out, like a window onto another vista. "The multiple troubles of man" The oboe calls out plaintively, its firm, clear sound probing outward as if searching across time itself.  In the central section, the countertenor's lines are haloed by a chorus of female voices intoning Lorca. the words don't really matter. In Andalusian art, images aren't representational but  myriad intricate patterns and colours, in Islamic tradition, epitomized by the Palace of Alhambra.

Thus Benjamin writes patterns of sound which serve the purpose of rhymes.  Brief images float into the foreground in typical Benjamin style "A girl in a garden" elides smoothly, to suddenly switch to terse staccato "tending her shrubs".  a transition built on pizzicato - suggesting the passage of time, perhaps, or splashing water, a concept fundamental to Andalusian metaphysical thought.  The women's voices herald a change of direction - bright, sharp and urgent. Then a brief pause, the silence almost imperceptibly interrupted by quiet tapping.  The male voice returns, singing strangely abstract semi harmony  "Written", the soloist sings but the sound is  magically clean and pure, shining all the brighter against a backdrop of a murmuring horn.  "The stars....." sings the countertenor,  and suddenly, sound seems to break off.  But perhaps that is the point ; the music, the "Dream of Song" does not die with its makers, however doomed their lives.

Benjamin's Dream  of the Song is a milestone. It represents a return to the meticulous craftsmanship of his work before Into the Little Hill and Written on Skin, though the operas are distinctively Benjaminesque.  Although it's written for small orchestra, it's  ambitious  compared with some of his earlier output, utterly assured and confident.

Gershwin restored to true greatness, Messiaen Prom 6

BBC Prom 6 - Gershwin An American in Paris (new edition) and Messiaen Turangalîla-Symphonie, two of the 20th century's most iconic pieces, with Sakari Oramo conducting the BBC Symphont Orchestra. Wonderful programme, but pity about the BBC marketing, obsessed as usual with themes and non-musical targets, missing the music itself.  Sure, this is Leonard Bernstein's anniversary but the world didn't revolve around him.  Bernstein conducted the premiere of Turangalîla-Symphonie  but only by chance, and didn't like it, which may have spoiled its reception.  There's a difference between musical perception in Europe and in the US which goes back a long way.  Nadia Boulanger and Messiaen both taught in Paris but operated in different directions.  There are teachers who teach students what to think, and teachers who teach students to think for themselves  Boulanger inspired cult-like deference, while Messiaen's students developed in many different ways.Messiaen's   students wereore diverse, while Boulanger's were largely English speakers. Bernstein thus absorbed the values of Boulanger devotees like Copland, conducting new music though not the new music of Messiaen and his circles which included Boulez. Messiaen adored America and Boulez spent much time conducting there so it's ironic to ponder what might have been. 

When Bernstein conducted  the Turangalîla-Symphonie in 1948, it was way too far for some to grasp. One critic panned it for its "fundamental emptiness… appalling melodic tawdriness…..a tune for Dorothy Lamour in a sarong, a dance for Hindu hillbillies”. If ever there was music in Technicolor, this is it, complete with cinematic swirls of the ondes martenot which we now assocaite with horror movies, though for Messaien there were no such connotations.  .Sakari Oramo doesn't conduct a lot of Messiaen but his Turangalîla-Symphonie is wonderful because it seems to appeal to his exuberant spirit.  This symphony explodes with the sheer joy of being alive.  If it is oddball, that's good, because its energy embraces human experience in all its aspects. Why shouldn't serious music be blissfully happy ?  Please read my article Sublimated sex: Messiaen Turangalîla-Symphonie for more. This also describes Oramo conducting it, with the BBCSO at the Barbican in May 2017. This Proms performance was more sedate, though good, mainly because the emphasis was on Gershwin.  

And rightly so since Oramo was conducting the UK premiere of a revised edition of An American in Paris which restores its original verve and originality . The piece is so well known from the movie of the same name that we could forget how Gershwin himself would have conceived it.  In the heady days of 1920's Paris it would have been innovative and deliciously subversive. Taxi horns and jazz syncopation ! The risqué world of modernity blowing into the concert hall !  Thus the vigour of this performance where Oramo brought out the audacity and freshness so it shone anew freed from decades of perceived performance practice. It's so vivid that many will prefer An American in Paris in its more neutral Hollywood form. But that does not do Gershwin justice.  This edition (and this performance) restores its true context.  For more about the new edition, by Mark Clague,  please read HERE.  Like George Antheil's Ballet Mécanique (1922/4) it represents a time when Europe and America were truly together and in tune at the forefront of a New Age. Lots more on Antheil on this site, please search. 

Sublimated sex : Messiaen Turangalîla-Symphonie, Oramo BBCSO

Sakari Oramo conducted the BBC SO in Messiaen Turangalîla-Symphonie at the Barbican,  yesterday. Sandwiched between Bernard Haitink's Mahler and Bruckner concerts this week, tickets didn't sell as well as they should have. Luckily, the  broadcast is on BBC Radio 3.  With Cynthia Millar playing the ondes martenot and Steven Osbormne on piano, this was class.  How I wished I hadn't chickened out of the long commute and returned my tickets.  This is an extraordinarily "visual" piece: you can't know it if you haven't, at least once, participated in performance, even if you're just listening.  It's a communal event, like a Pagan Mass.  

One of Sakari Oramo's many strengths is his sense of humour, so this Turangalîla-Symphonie was wonderfully zany, capturing the crazy free spirits in the piece without losing the tension that keeps the whole, sprawling panorama together through ten sections, each clearly distinct.  A vivacious performance, the BBCSO on message and lively.  

The seeds of Turangalîla were planted when Messiaen and Yvonne  Loriod fell desperately in love, but, being strictly religious, they didn't sleep together til they married decades later.  Turangalîla-Symphonie, the fruit of their passion, is sex, sublimated in music. Not for nothing the two principal solo parts are written for ondes martenot and piano, the piece operating as a dialogue for two poles united in a dazzling landscape.  Boulez adored Messiaen, and vice versa, but this was the one piece that Boulez could not bring himself to conduct. "Brothel music", he quipped, which is true, for the piece is explicitly erotic.  Since Messiaen was Boulez's father figure, it must have felt like watching your parents at it. You know it happened, or you wouldn't have been born, but......

When Turangalîla premiered in 1948, one writer  referred to its “fundamental emptiness… appalling melodic tawdriness…..a tune for Dorothy Lamour in a sarong, a dance for Hindu hillbillies”. He had a point. If ever there was music in Technicolor, this is it, complete with cinematic swirls of the ondes martenot.  These days, when we hear the ondes martenot, we don’t necessarily associate it with cutting-edge Varèse, but with Béla Lugosi. They don’t even make movies like that anymore. Not even B movies.   Perhaps Turangalîla suffers from having been premiered in the wrong time and place. In 1948, Messiaen was largely unknown in the United States, so Koussevitsky's commission was very high profile indeed. The premiere was given by Leonard Bernstein, who probably relished the Hollywoodesque extravagance of the piece. But there's a hidden background.  Bernstein was influenced, indirectly, by Nadia Boulanger, who thought music ended with mid-period Stravinsky, and even turned her back on him when he deviated from diktat.  She could not stand Messiaen: they operated rival salons, hers catering mainly to English speakers, his more liberal and "European".   Yvonne Loriod was originally a Boulanger protégé, but when she took up with Messiaen, Boulanger cut her dead.  So perhaps the world wasn't ready for Turangalîla  in 1948.

For Turangalîla-Symphonie is a shockingly modern work. If at times it seems to parody the idea of Romantic Music as defined by Hollywood, why not? Messiaen's values stemmed from medieval traditions of religious ecstasy, which gave 19th-century French Romanticism a particular flavour, different to Austro-German tradition.   Messiaen was not "doing Hollywood".   Like other Europeans emerging from the hardships of war and rationing,  Messaien was responding to the liberating idea of uninhibited exuberance. Turangalîla-Symphonie would have seemed like an explosion of blinding colour after years of repression. The sensuality also connected to long-standing French fascination  with exotic, non-European cultures.

Wild as the piece is, though, it is also sophisticated. Its complex rhythms need to be played with vigorous precision, so the textures stay vividly bright and clear.  In Messiaen, colour is essential.  The best performances I've heard have had a taut savagery that brings out the muscular energy in the piece. Bad performances are chemically coloured soup.  Fortunately, the BBC SO can let their hair down without losing their innate stylishness. Fundamental to this piece, and to Messiaen's work in general, is the powerful pulse, often expressed in craggy ostinato.   Geology in music, maybe: it represents a life force, nature itself and, for Messiaen, derived from God.  Thus Oramo shaped the crazy flights of wild abandon without losing sight of their place in the structure.  Messiaen didn't use the ondes martenot by accident: it's an instrument that plays with unseen forces of physics and sound.  The protagonists in Turangalîla-Symphonie  are ecstatic because they've found release. They wouldn't be transformed if they hadn't had something to be liberated from in the first place.

Lovely L'Ascension beforehand, too, demonstrating how far  Turangalîla-Symphonie propels Messiaen forward. 

Aldeburgh why I woke before dawn for Messiaen

In the reedbeds around Snape, Aldeburgh, Pierre-Laurent Aimard played Olivier Messiaen Catalogue d'Oiseaux to greet the dawn chorus. RSPB Minsmere, whose photo this is,  is one of the finest nature reserves in the UK, home to nearly 6,000 species.  The Alde River estuary is virtually untouched in many places, it's an area of outstanding beauty, and a haven for year-round residents as well as migrating species.  Aimard's Catalogue d'Oiseaux is  a metaphor for what the Aldeburgh Music Festival stands for.  Long may it be protected from exploitation and vested interests. Long may it stand for pristine excellence.

Messiaen was a deeply spiritual person, so for him birds were part of God's creation. Not for nothing that his great opera was Saint François d'Assise, the humble saint who embraced simplicity and talked to the birds.  (Read more about the opera here)  And so I am up with the birds, too, with darkness outside, listening quietly. An incredible haven of peace in a world that's become insane with extremist delusion.  This morning Aimard played Le Traquet stapazin (black-eared wheatear), La Bouscarle (Cetti's warbler) and Le Traquet rieur (black wheatear)  Never mind that these aren't the exact same birds at Aldeburgh. Messiaen's music is music, transcribing and adapting the spirit of the  birds.   It's 5 am now, and the music is over, but I'm going outside to sit in the garden for a bit. The sun's not quite out yet. It will be cold. But it's so beautiful.

BBC Radio 3 is broadcasting all four of Aimard's Catalogue d'Oiseaux concerts live (and on demand) plus other features on connected themes. Next concert 1pm, then 730pm and 11pm. Link HERE.

Aldeburgh Reedbeds Aimard Messiaen

The Aldeburgh Music Festival epitomizes Britten's belief that life, art and landscape connect, and this year's festival is particularly innovative.  Pierre-Laurent Aimard will take his music outdoors, into the reedbeds that surround Snape and start playing in darkness at 430 am.  In the darkness, the landscape may seem still, but the reedbeds come alive with birds, for this is Minsmere, one of the finest nature reserves in this country.  Olivier Messiaen's Catalogue des Oiseaux is a magnum opus of 13 substantial movements, spread over 7 books, and takes nearly three hours to play. It isn't something you'd hear often in recital.  Messiaen himself woke before sunrise, waiting in the darkness for the dawn chorus  when birds call out to mark sunrise. This Catalogue des Oiseaux will unfold in stages throughout the day of 19th June, ending around midnight when the birds go to rest.  The music will be heard, literally, in context, even if the birds at Minsmere aren't the same as those in the Camargue, where Messiaen heard them, but the event will be "music theatre", music heard with added value.  Aimard is, without doubt, the greatest exponent of Messiaen's works for piano, so this will be the experience of a lifetime.

Please also read my piece on Aldeburgh's Les Illuminations - Britten illuminated. Benjamin Britten goes to the circus !  And why not ? Rimbaud's original is much longer but Britten's setting emphasizes its theatrical aspects.  Les Illuminations is a watershed in Britten's creative growth because he was finding his own, individual voice through what Auden was to call "mediterraneanising" - breaking away from the conventional world of a mainstream British composer. Britten's horizons looked outward to the North Sea and beyond.  He adored Alban Berg and would have been well aware of Lulu, where characters flit from persona to persona, and where proceedings are overseen by a Ringmaster.  Perhaps it's no accident that he responded to ever-changing circus in Les illuminations and it's keynote cri de coeur "J'ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage!" It's not a cry of triumph but the realization that the key - the illumination -  to creativity lies in being genuinely original.

Hindu Hillbillies ? Messiaen Turangalîla-symphonie, Salonen

Messiaen Turangalîla-Symphonie, with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia, Royal Festival Hall, London.  A magnificent performance, infused with true insight into the whole  trajectory  of Messiaen's output.  Turangalîla is a strange, exotic beast, quite unlike anything else in the repertoire, confusing and contradicting easy assumptions.  Salonen, however, is one of the best Messiaen exponents of our time, and understands the idiom well. This was a performance of great insight.
 
When Turangalîla premiered in 1948, one writer  referred to its “fundamental emptiness… appalling melodic tawdriness…..a tune for Dorothy Lamour in a sarong, a dance for Hindu hillbillies”. He had a point. If ever there was music in Technicolor, this is it, complete with cinematic swirls of the ondes martenot.  These days, when we hear the ondes martenot, we don’t associate it with cutting-edge Varèse, but with Béla Lugosi. They don’t even make movies like that anymore.

Perhaps Turangalîla suffers from having been premiered in the wrong time and place. In 1948, Messiaen was largely unknown in the United States, so Koussevitsky's commission was very high profile indeed. The premiere was given by Leonard Bernstein, who probably relished the Hollywoodesque extravagance of the piece.  Although Bernstein didn't work with Nadia Boulanger, her influence over American music was overwhelming.  Boulanger and Messiaen both worked in Paris but occupied completely different spheres. Boulanger believed that music stopped with mid-period Stravinsky. She was a forceful personality,  idolized without question by her largely American (English-speaking) students. She despised |Messiaen, who ignored her, The Great Divide between European and American approaches to music was thus entrenched and continues to this day.

Salonen met Messiaen, learning the music direct from the scores, and from Messiaen's  favourite student, Pierre Boulez. For this London  performance, Pierre-Laurent Aimard played the all-important piano part, he too a great Messiaen interpreter closely and personally associated with the composer.  They were joined on this occasion by Valérie Hartmann-Claverie, who studied ondes martenot with Jeanne Loriod.  Now that the Loriod sisters are gone, and Boulez no longer conducts,  there can be few more authoritative performers than these.  There will be two more Turangalîlas this year, at the BBC Proms and at the Three Choirs Festival, but Salonen, Aimard, Hartmann-Claverie and the Philharmonia will easily be the best.

Instead of milking  Turangalila's lurid psychedelic effects for their own sake, Salonen emphasized its startling energy. From the first bars, great structural forces are at play as in Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum (more here). This isn't coincidence, for Turangalila deals with time and the transcendance of time. Hence the wild, volatile piano part.  No room for fuzzy approximations here: Aimard's passages flew with lucid savagery. The "male" voice, and the "statue" theme  express a vivid life force which can neither be contained nor extinguished. Against this the "female" of "flower\ themes of Claverie's ondes martenot, yielding seductively and langorous.   Turangalîla was conceived when Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod fell in love. Their love was forbidden by the restraints of their religion, so found expression in the zany, extra-terrestial nature of this music with its exotic "Peruvian" and gamelan flourishes, all part of the French fascination with non-western traditions, which Messiaen was to explore further, visiting Japan and the Far East. The ostinato operates like a heartbeat: throbbing with intense, erotic exhilaration, finding release in the sighs of the ondes martenot, taken up by lovely, circular shapes in the strings and winds.

This exoticism isn’t there for decoration, but stems from Messiaen's profound belief that all things reflect God’s bounty, even extra-marital love. Turangalîla. is a celebration of life, of love, and of creation in all its glory. Getting an orchestra of this size to move as a single organism takes some doing, but is also part of meaning. Diverse as the world may be, all things exist in purposeful union. Salonen's diamond-hard precision sharpens the impact.  Every note counts, even the tiniest. Messiaen was a devoted bird watcher who could pick out the individual song of the smallest birds amid the cacophony of a dawn chorus.  This insight, too, underpins Salonen's use of contrast. Many instruments play at the same time, but they don’t blend, as such. Instead the shapes come from precise stops and starts, clearly focussed decelerations and accelerations. We stop and listen to the silences, as we should, in nature, and in relationships. .

The ten parts of the symphony unfold in connection with each other. Tender chantes d'amour alternate with passages of extreme fervour. The subject may be love, but the idiom is a kind of religious ecstasy, beyond the comprehension of those who don't understand the zany logic of altered states. Fluttering notes, like the fluttering of wings, or post-coital heartbeats, then, shimmering veils of sound that cast a magical glow, like enchantment.  Turangalîla is a thing of beauty, its gossamer whimsy concealing great strength. Again, the importance of clarity and purity, and the definition which Salonen, Aimard, Claverie and the Philharmonia brought to this performance.  Aimard's playing of the more whimsical passages was glorious, as if he were teasing the orchestra , inspiring brightness of tone in the percussion, followed by great waves of sound.  Some hear in the sassy passages, echoes of Cole Porter (Love for Sale)  but Messiaen's images are far more audacious. The interweaving of themes, the alternating moments of dense sound and quiet  passage suggest something surprisingly organic, as if we were experiencing the creation of the cosmos itself.  But then, Turangalîla is so explosive, and so liberating that it is an act of creation  One can imagine, perhaps,  the stars shining in the universe and the large, angular sections, the shifting of tectonic plates, ideas which Messiaen would develop throughout his work. The final section, Modéré, presque vif, avec une grande joie:is a kind of apotheosis. The orchestra plays in unison, the lovers are united with each other and with God and Nature in glorious sublimation. Listen to the blaze of that  last coda!

Messaien and Loriod didn't have children (apart from favourites like Boulez, Aimard and |George Benjamin)  but their relationship led to the birth of some of the most remarkable music of the 20th century, its quirky, creative freedom  contradicting silly notions that modern music follows rigid rules. True artists don't operate in schools, like fish, or sheep,  but like the birds Messiaen so loved, but thrive as distinctive individuals. 

The programme began with Debussy Syrinx (Samuel Coles, principal flute) and  Debussy La damoiselle élue with Sophie Bevan,  Anna Stéphany (mezzo-soprano) and the ladies of the Philharmonia Chorus. The text is based on Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The Blessèd Damozel.. The love there is forbidden too, but poisoned. No doubt Debussy, with his fondness for  Maeterlinck would have been aware of Rossetti raiding the grave of his beloved to retrieve his poems, tainted by the bodily fluids of death.  Not something Messiaen would have contemplated.

Listen again on BBC Radio 3

Three Choirs Festival Hereford 2015

The full programme for the 2015 Three Choirs Festival, this year at Hereford, has been announced.  Many juicy nuggets and surprises, reflecting Artistic Director Geraint Bowen's  lively approach to this unique and ever-developing Festival. This year, the combined choirs of Hereford, Worcester and Gloucester will be joined for the first time by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment,  supplementing now regular visitors like the Philharmonia Orchestra. The OAE will be able to expand the Festival repertoire in imaginative directions.

As always, the "big" events in the Cathedral form the foundations of the Three Choirs tradition. This year's first evening concert, on Saturday 25th July, features Elgar's Dream of Gerontius, (Please read more here).  Sarah Connolly. Peter Auty and Neal Davies, with Geraint Bowen conducting the Philharmonia. I recommend going early to Hereford, to take part in the Opening service (Purcell and Handel), because Three Choirs is more than just a music festival; it is also a celebration of religious faith, which defines the whole spirit of the Festival. Go, whatever God you adhere to, because faith and hope connect all religions.  Plus, you'll be able to attend Roderick Williams' afternoon recital "Song of the Hero". Williams will be singing Elgar's Sea Pictures for baritone and piano - unusual, and surprisingly powerful. It's been in his repertoire for some time (e.g. at the Oxford Lieder Festival). He'll also be singing lesser-known songs by Vaughan Williams and Howells and a new commission by Rhian Samuel. This is an important concert, and will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3. (date unknown)

On Sunday 26th July, Olivier Messiaen Turangalîla-Symphonie - a truly spectacular celebration of life, love and nature. , not something which one might associate with staid English church traditions, but a deeply felt, spiritual work, nonetheless. Messiaen was extremely devout, and an organist, who played at Mass almost every day for many decades.  It will be interesting to hear how the symphony fills the space in this Cathedral. Certainly, the sound of the ondes martenot will carry well.  Jac van Steen conducts the Philharmonia with Steven Osborne (pianist) and Valerie Hartmann-Claverie (ondes martenot).

"Requiem for 500 years"  on Monday 27th, a good concert of very early music with the Orlando Consort, followed by a talk on Agincourt, the decisive battle which separated England from France, 700 years ago. This is Arthur Bliss Day, too, with a rare performance of his Morning Heroes, a song symphony from 1930, in memory of Bliss's brother who died in the Great War. It's narrated by Samuel West, and conducted by Andrew Davis. On Tuesday "Three Centuries in one afternoon", continuing the theme of historical context, and Bach St Matthew Passion in the evening. On Wednesday, we move forward to 1715, with a concert built around Vivaldi The Cuckoo, wildly popular in England at the time, performed by Italian baroque specialists La Serenissima. In the evening, Beethoven Missa Solemnis. At Dore Abbey, Roy Strong presents "Poets and Princes" an entertainment on the English Monarchy, followed, ironically, by a talk on the Jacobite rebellion. The keynote concert that evening will be Carl Neilsen's Hymnus Amoris, coupled with William Mathias (d 1992) Lux Aeterna. Verdi Requiem on Friday night. The Festival concludes with "The Gathering Wave" a community participation event. Lots more - plays, talks, visits, chamber concerts - peruse the programme, looking for the hidden gems.

Henri Dutilleux is dead

Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013)  died this morning, aged 97. This photo dates from 2008, when the composer came to London to receive the Gold Medal from The Royal Philharmonic Society. He attended a concert at the Wigmore Hall, given in his honour. Later that evening, who should I meet walking past the Wigmore Hall at midnight? 92-year-old Henri Dutilleux, on his way to his hotel after the post-concert party.

The Wigmore Hall concert was rather special because it was conducted by Jan-Pascal Tortelier, whose father, Paul Tortelier, had studied with Dutilleux at the Paris Conservatoire. How often does a conductor do the music of a composer who has known him since he was in nappies? Dutilleux recounted how he and Paul Tortelier as students were too poor to go out much, but scraped together enough so they could hear Stravinsky conduct Les Noces. So Tortelier fils prefaced his concert with Stravinsky's Concerto in D for string orchestra (1946)  written around the time Dutilleux began to make his own name.

There were many other cryptic references in Tortelier's erudite programme, played by the Nash Ensemble. Dutilleux’s Dyptique- Les Citations is an unusual combination for harpsichord, oboe, percussion and double bass. Britten had also used percussion and harpsichord together, and there’s also a quote from Peter Grimes since the piece was initially written to honour Peter Pears. In typical Dutilleux mode, the composer added the double bass part in 1991 with a quote from  a piece for organ by Jehan Alain, another of Dutilleux's circle, who was killed in battle in 1940.

Extremely high violins introduced Ainsi la nuit, infusing the static first section with gleaming brightness. Again, this is distinctive Dutilleux, with elegant, delicate patterns evolving and changing until the piece reaches its conclusion in another static section where sound seems to float. Indeed, this section is actually called “suspended time”. This performance seemed to choreograph itself, so much were the musicians in accord. The long arches seemed like stretch, the ostinato like en pointe. I was struck by the connection to Les noces.

Tortelier also conducted Mystère d’un Instant so beautifully that Dutilleuex, greatly moved, said that was the finest he had ever heard. This version was a more recent revision of the 1989 original, reducing the number of strings to 18 from 24. There’s a feeling of space and light about this piece. Tones seem to shimmer, wavering between extremes of register, and textures seem to evaporate before reforming. What’s also interesting is Dutilleux’s composing rationale. Instead of using a formal strategy, in each of the ten sections he seeks the “mystery of an instant”, captured spontaneously as the musical idea emerges. Each section is an individual “snapshot” as Dutilleux calls it, like a Hockney collage perhaps, but animated and fluid. There’s a part where four cellos interact, another where high, keening string lines evolve into a tumble of quick, spiralling notes on cimbalom. A wayward drum rhythm unfolds to a jerky, pizzicato sequence on strings, itself superseded by a section where percussion and cimbalom lead. Then the strings soared higher and higher and in came the tam tam beaten at measured intervals, exactly as it would be in an East Asian temple. Dutilleux's reference is explicit, though what it signifies in the wider scheme of things I can’t guess. But that’s why this music is interesting. It may be neat and precise but it alludes to things beyond itself.

At one time some of Dutilleux's admirers resented Messiaen's much higher profile. That's petty. Dutilleux and Messaien are very different indeed. But perhaps they have a common heir in George Benjamin.