Spectacular Tribute to Olivier Messiaen

The title of a work called “From the Canyons to the Stars . . .” and written for New York City in celebration of the American bicentennial a quarter-century ago might seem to have obvious implications--an urban epic evoking Manhattan, from its concrete chasms to its celebrities.

Not when the composer was Olivier Messiaen.

Commissioned by patron Alice Tully, the French composer known for his love of bird song and loathing of cities took one look at the mid-sized hall named for Tully at Lincoln Center and thought Bryce Canyon, Utah. He then figured out a way to squeeze a 45-member orchestra, along with large and exotic percussion instruments and solo piano, onto a chamber-music stage and turn the hall into the sonic equivalent of aviary and mountain.

Lincoln Center Festival 2000 is celebrating Messiaen’s monumental music. It began last week with Hans Vonk conducting the New York Philharmonic in “Illuminations From the Beyond . . .”; Friday, the orchestra plays the “Turangalila” Symphony under its music director Kurt Masur. Midpoint in the celebration, Tuesday, the Lincoln Chamber Music Society, conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw and with pianist Peter Serkin as soloist, offered an unforgettably spectacular and intense performance of the 12-movement, 100-minute “From the Canyons to the Stars . . . .”

Due to the demand for tickets, the performance was not, alas, in Tully, the work’s historic setting, but next door in the larger Avery Fisher Hall. That meant a slight loss of sonic impact, but it also demonstrated the important impact a festival setting can have in generating unusual interest in boldly original work.

At a Messiaen discussion preceding the concert, Vonk noted that when he conducted the “Turangalila,” Messiaen’s early and almost drippingly Romantic grand symphony, with his St. Louis Symphony during the regular season at Carnegie Hall, an audience of 2,500 dwindled to 800. I witnessed something similar (though not quite that bad) in 1992 when Zubin Mehta conducted the world premiere of “Illuminations” with the New York Philharmonic, and also at one of his “Turangalila” performances here. A few people wandered out of Fisher on Tuesday as well, but this time nearly everyone stayed--and cheered.

With Messiaen’s music, one either enters into its world wholeheartedly or shuts oneself off from it altogether. And Messiaen presents unique obstacles for a modern audience. His fixation with birds and his devout Catholicism, which colored every note he wrote, are not universal concerns. In the pre-concert discussion, De Leeuw, who is an inspiring conductor of new music and a lifelong Messiaen devotee, acknowledged that a belief in God was the undeniable center of the composer’s work. The Dutch conductor also confessed that he did not share Messiaen’s religious commitment, but he offered a third way. “I believe in the music,” he said, pointing to his Messiaen score.

De Leeuw, who led the dazzling performances of Louis Andriessen’s new opera “Writing to Vermeer” earlier in the Lincoln Center Festival, then proved to be a persuasive priest of Messiaen in a performance of extraordinary grandeur, excitement and pervasive sensuality. Just as magnificent was Serkin, whose playing seems to reach yet another level of depth and concentration every few years. He was a transfixing presence.

Messiaen wrote for an orchestra of soloists, and many of New York’s finest chamber players were on the stage (including a few who had been in the work’s premiere). That could have been a mixed blessing, however, because some are also now among the ranks of New York’s burnt-out professional musicians. But the monastic intensity and ferocity of Serkin and the dynamic fervor of De Leeuw seemed to remind them why they became such fine musicians in the first place. And perhaps that, too, is the ultimate power of Messiaenic conversion.