Disciple Golub Gives Foretaste of Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen’s grand four-hour opera “St. Francois d’Assise,” staged in a high-tech production by enfant terrible Peter Sellars, is the talk of this summer’s Salzburg Festival.

The controversial production of Messiaen’s 1983 opera about everybody’s favorite saint is supposedly scheduled for Los Angeles (but exactly when is sketchy). But music lovers who need a quicker Messiaen fix can hear one of the composer’s seminal chamber works, “Quartet for the End of Time,” this Wednesday at Sherwood Auditorium.

Pianist David Golub, one of the four SummerFest artists who will perform the work, places it on a high altar in the pantheon of 20th-Century music. But, because Messiaen’s mystical opus demands acute spiritual concentration, Golub declines to perform it with any frequency.

“I’ve been approached fairly recently to go out and tour with this piece. Although I love it, I don’t think I can do it repeatedly. I’m not a saint. To live in a constant state of ecstasy is a little too wearing on my nervous system, especially when you need to go out and function in the everyday world. To play this piece is a very draining emotional experience.”

Performing the “Quartet for the End of Time,” arguably Messiaen’s best-known work, is an apt tribute to the composer, who died this April at the age of 83. Ironically, it is the first Messiaen work programmed in SummerFest’s seven years. Clarinetist David Shifrin, cellist David Finckel and violinist Julie Rosenfeld will join Golub for the performance.

Messiaen wrote the piece in 1941, while imprisoned in a German POW camp east of Dresden, but the work is not about war, nor does it wallow in despair. Instead, the composer constructed a post-apocalytic vision that transcends time.

Messiaen provided elaborate explanations, replete with Catholic symbolism, for each of the work’s eight movements. Golub said that the Catholic context, however, is not a stumbling block to understanding the piece.

“The subject matter speaks to me, and I’m not Catholic,” he said. “I’m Jewish. Mysticism is something fundamental about any religion, whether it’s Jewish cabalistic mysticism or that of any of the Eastern religions. They are remarkably similar.”

Golub was quick to add that the mystical aspect of the “Quartet for the End of Time” did not make it difficult for the listener to enter its musical ethos.

“People get it, whether they know what they’re getting or not. I think it moves people to the core because they are touched beneath a conscious level. You recognize these sounds, but if you really put your finger on where you had heard them in your own life, I don’t think you could. They are almost Jungian.”

That Golub provides perceptive, thoughtfully articulated analysis of the music he performs should come as no surprise to loyal SummerFest attendees. Golub has played SummerFest every year since its inception in 1986 and has amply proven his thorough musicianship.

Critics have showered him with accolades such as “clairvoyant musicality” and “fleet technique.” He has been festival artistic director Heiichiro Ohyama’s most dependable and versatile keyboard resource.

When Golub is not working the summer festival circuit, the 42-year-old pianist either tours with his own ensemble, the Golub-Kaplan-Carr Trio, or pursues a solo career. The Chicago-born musician now makes his home in Milan, where he lives with his Italian wife. Because his performances are equally divided between Europe and North America, he has resigned himself to transatlantic commuting.

“I guess I’ll have chronic jet lag for the rest of my life,” he sighed.

Building the Ring. San Diego Opera Scenic Studio will construct all four sets for Lyric Opera of Chicago’s cycle of Wagner’s “Ring.”

The local shop, located in Logan Heights and operated by San Diego Opera, built the set for “Das Rheingold” earlier this summer and shipped it to the Windy City last month in time for Lyric’s fall season. The next two operas of the tetralogy, “Die Walkure” and “Siegfried,” will be given in 1994 and 1995 respectively. In 1996, “Gotterdammerung” will be staged with the other three “Ring” operas.

Over the last season, the scenic studio also built sets for an “Aida” production in Caracas, Venezuela, and for Greater Miami Opera’s new staging of Franchetti’s “Cristoforo Colombo” in honor of the Columbus quincentennial. The studio will build a new set for San Diego Opera’s 1993 production of Massenet’s “Werther.”

Mozart in Escondido. It is not another opera spoof by P.D.Q. Bach. Rather, the San Diego Symphony will take its all-Mozart SummerPops program to Grape Day Park in Escondido at 7:30 p.m. Friday. Presented by Escondido’s Center for the Arts, the Mozart program, under the direction of guest conductor Andrew Massey will be the orchestra’s second North County foray this summer. The June pops concert in Escondido drew about 4,000, according to Maureen McDonald of the Center for the Arts.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

Hailing a New Year

Not everyone celebrates the New Year on Jan. 1.

In honor of the upcoming dawn of the new academic year, MUSE chamber music series organizer Scott Paulson has scheduled G. P. Telemann’s New Year Cantata for Sunday’s 7 p.m. MUSE concert in the parish hall of the La Jolla Congregational Church.

Paulson says the dense 18th-Century German libretto boils down to a simple translation: “Put your past quarrels aside and start the New Year with a fresh slate.”

Soprano Ellen Lawson will be assisted by harpsichordist Myrl Hendershott, oboist Paulson and bassoonist Tom Schubert. Other Baroque gems by Handel, J. S. Bach and Maria Margharita Grimani will complete this musical offering.