Critic’s Notebook: From the Canyons to the Stars... Messiaen, Metzmacher & Klangforum at the Konzerthaus

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Klangforum im Konzerthaus: Ornithologisches und Astrologisches Staunen und Schwärmen

O. Messiaen Des canyons aux étoiles T.Fischer, Hardink, Utah Symphony (hyperion, 2023) US | UK | DE

O. Messiaen Des canyons aux étoiles M.W.Chung, Muraro, ORTF (DG, 2002) US | UK | DE

O. Messiaen Des canyons aux étoiles Eschenbach, Barto, LPO (LPO, 2015) US | UK | DE

Ornithological and Astrological Wonders and Raptures

The Klangforum under Ingo Metzmacher brought the iridescent sonic universe of the American West to the Konzerthaus

There are works where really only ought to do one thing: close your eyes, put down your pen, the notebook away – and, ears first, jump into and fully lose yourself in the music. Olivier Messiaen’s Des canyons aux étoiles... (From the Canyons to the Stars...) is such a piece. One can safely let interpretation be interpretation and simply wallow in the sounds – comparisons to other performances are out of the question anyway; so rarely is this piece on the concert schedule; that one would be lucky to hear it once, or even twice more, in your lifetime. One has no choice but gratitude. And gratitude was called for Friday evening at the Konzerthaus, where the Klangforum under Ingo Metzmacher presented this evening-length masterwork by Messiaen.

All this gushing shouldn’t obscure the fact that Messiaen in general, or Des canyons in particular, is not necessarily easy fare. But anyone who engages with the musical language of this ornithological composer, anyone who gives Messiaen the benefit of the doubt that the composer was only ever aiming for beauty, will find much for themselves in this symphonic poem about the Colorado Plateau, its landscapes, its birds, and the starry firmament above – in the composition’s silences and pauses, its outbursts and busyness.

Mind you, even the term "symphonic" requires qualification: Des canyons is more a concerto for piano, horn (both with demanding solo passages), xylorimba, glockenspiel, and wind choir – with the friendly support from a moderately sized string section as well as wind- and sand machines. On the surface, the music may at times sound "modern." At its heart, God's creation is celebrated in the most romantic way – and the Klangforum did just that, with primal force and with extraordinary tenderness.

P.S. Charles reviews a gorgeous film about Messiaen, with long excerpts from Des canyons and wonderful underlying pictures, here: DVD: Olivier Messiaen, Not for the Birds

P.P.S. Above/on the left are three highly recommendable recordings of Des canyons aux étoiles... - but there are more to choose from:

Reinbert de Leeuw, Marja Bon Asko Ensemble et al. (Montaigne)
Esa-Pekka Salonen, Paul Crossley, London Sinfonietta (CBS/Sony)
J.F. Heisser, J.F. Neuburger, O.d.Chambre Nouvelle-Aquitaine (Mirare)
Alan Gilbert, Inon Barnatan, New York Philharmonic (Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival)
Ludovic Morlot, Steven Osborne, Seattle Symphony (SSO Media)
Marius Constant, Yvonne Loriod, ORTF (Erato/Warner/Apex)

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Critic’s Notebook: Bruckner 4th on the Organ. A Mistake.

Also reviewed for DiePresse: Ein Warnschuss des Brucknerwahnsinns

Bruckner symphonies on the organ. Obvious pursuit or dubious pleasure? An evening at the Konzerthaus suggested strongly one over the other.

It was my own darn fault. I wanted to go hear Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony that Monday, January 22nd, in the Konzerthaus. Played on the organ! Not that it wasn’t promising to hear Hansjörg Albrecht, a fearfully gifted organ virtuoso and long-time director of Munich’s Bach Choir, perform the task at hand and feet. He has, after all, just recorded all (well, 10 of 11) of Bruckner’s Symphonies in transcriptions, each on a different organ in the various cities Bruckner used to operate in. (I even wrote the liner notes for the first couple of releases, so I still feel slightly invested in that daring project.) Also, just the idea of hearing a well-known work from a different angle has its attractions. That’s why I am such a sucker for transcriptions, in the first place. And that’s why I found myself in the Great –meagerly filled – Hall, for it is one of the great ironies of the organ concert that the space a grand instrument demands is in inverse proportion to the space it takes to seat those who are willing to hear it. Generally, that’s a pity – and the Konzerthaus is to be lauded for treating its instrument to a subscription cycle of concerts, when it would make more economic sense to simply rent out the hall on those nights, instead.

A.Bruckner Symphony No.4 (Organ) Hansjörg Albrecht Oehms Classics

As it were, there were things working against the evening being as enjoyable as I had – naively – hoped. There’s the nature of the beast to consider. Why hear Bruckner’s symphonies performed on an instrument for which they were decidedly not meant in the first place? Bruckner, fine organist though he was, and despite several features in his treatment of the orchestra that remind us of the organ, wrote his symphonies for the orchestra in the secular setting of a concert hall. Had he wanted to write for the organ, he might have produced more than five, six middling, incidental works for it. Yes, given those parallels and failing the survival of Bruckner’s grand improvisations, it’s tempting to hear what Bruckner’s compositions sound like on ‘his’ instrument. But can those inherent difficulties be overcome to provide for unfettered entertainment?

Not on the 1913 Rieger Organ of the Konzerthaus, at least. Yes, with its 116 stops it’s the largest of its (mechanical) kind and the largest organ Rieger has ever built, until Helsinki’s Musiikkitalo will be completed, later this year. It’s been recently overhauled. It’s tantamount to a national monument among concert organs. But I have never been able to enjoy it, except, perhaps, in an accompanying role, no matter which organist has performed on it – Olivier Vernet, Cameron Carpenter, or now Albrecht. It’s a finicky thing, keys seem to respond just by looking at them, the slightest slip of the finger sounds like a major mishap, and the relatively short reverb of the hall does not help to give any glory to its ungainly sound. It’s either hushed or blaringly loud, but never glorious, sumptuous. And the more one tries to be true to the very complexity of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony on the organ, the less organic – literally and metaphorically speaking – the result at hand becomes. The instrument sounds positively overwhelmed, lines are broken, and dense passages sound like clutter to which the mechanical noise only adds its own desultory note. A disappointment then, and the first warning shot of the Bruckner Year 2024, which threatens with Anton-Overkill.

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Photo © Hansjörg Albrecht

Messiaen's Alpine Retreat

Olivier Messiaen, who died in 1992, was buried near his vacation house on the Lac de Laffrey in the Isère, where he composed most of his major works. In his will, Messiaen asked that this residence be made into a place in honor of his music, and now it will serve as a "little Villa Médicis in the Alps," with space for five artists to stay there. An article in Le Figaro (La maison de Messiaen deviendra une «petite villa Médicis des Alpes», June 29) has the details (my translation):

The three small white buildings with blue shutters will be inaugurated on July 1, 2, and 3 with a series of concerts. The residence "will be able to receive a string quartet who might come to prepare for a concert, or a composer, or an ornithologist, because Messiaen was a bird lover, going so far as inventing a system to transcribe their songs, which still remains a secret," explains Bruno Messina, general director of the Isère artistic agency that will manage the establishment.

Far from being anything like the sumptuous Renaissance palace of the Académie de France in Rome, the Messiaen house is "the anti-villa Médicis," says Messina. Significant work, costing 1.2 million euros and financed by the composer's estate, was carried out to solidify the foundations, to decorate the ceiling with images of bird, and to create three rehearsal studios. Very modern and well lit, the rooms have been cleared out of the kitschy bric-à-brac and religious objects beloved by the composer.

This sanitizing of Messiaen's Catholicism is wrong-headed, as the faith is inextricable from Messiaen's music, but critics do it all the time, too. The plan is to leave the property, where Messiaen sat every morning to make his birdsong recordings, otherwise as natural as possible, with the proximity to the Lac de Laffrey, tall trees and other plants, and views of the Taillefer and Chartreuse massifs. The opening concerts will include 14 short performances of Messiaen's music, all free, recalling the Stations of the Cross, followed by a concert in the Basilica of Notre Dame de la Salette, with Roger Muraro on piano and Nathalie Forget on Ondes Martenot, coinciding with the 170th anniversary of the Marian apparition there.

Beauty Over Power: Herbert Schuch at the Kennedy Center

We welcome this review from Ionarts guest contributor Seth Arenstein.

Invocation (Bach, Liszt, Ravel, Messiaen, Murail), H. Schuch (Naïve, 2014)

Washington Performing Arts President and CEO Jenny Bilfield rang in the 49th season of the Hayes Piano Series with a Saturday afternoon recital at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater centered on musical evocations of bells. While compositions from Liszt, Ravel, Messiaen, and Murail provided bell-like sounds, as did Busoni and Bauer arrangements for piano of J.S. Bach vocal works, it was the young pianist Herbert Schuch whose sensitive touch and gorgeously subdued playing rang out this day. Yet Schuch’s playing was anything but loud. During this recital, the Romanian-born Schuch brought forth subtle colors from the piano, without the quicksilver technique and sheer power that seem to be hallmarks of many of today’s most popular young pianists.

From the opening of the program, Tristan Murail’s Cloches d’adieu, et un sourire, Murail's homage to his teacher, Olivier Messiaen, Schuch began building a quiet, mesmerizing line of music that lasted nearly one hour, through two more works: selections from Liszt’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, S. 173, and Ferruccio Busoni’s arrangement of Bach’s chorale prelude Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639. The subtle wave lasted in part because Schuch played with barely a pause between the compositions, never leaving the piano bench.

By failing to announce that the works were to be performed en masse, Schuch and WPA took a risk that the Hayes audience would appreciate this uncommon practice and be able to follow along. While some audience members undoubtedly were puzzled, weaving the pieces together worked beautifully in an artistic sense. Schuch’s lyricism, displayed best during the Liszt, and his gorgeous control created a continuous, compelling tension until the Bach-Busoni’s final notes brought the first half to an end. It was as if Schuch had created a single, soft musical statement, despite playing pieces from various historical periods.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, Herbert Schuch is a good pianist, but he inspires more questions than answers (Washington Post, October 19)

The second half was only slightly different. Again, Schuch performed his selections without a break, and the vast majority of his playing rarely rose above mezzo-piano. There was a moment of great contrast, however, as the dramatic Funerailles selection from Liszt’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses began with loud, clanging bells and later depicted a battle, with trumpet calls and horses’ hooves pounding. Schuch had little trouble transitioning from an afternoon of subtle, pianissimo playing, sitting calmly erect on the piano bench, to moments in the Liszt, where he hunched over the keyboard to produce fortissimo chords. He did so with power and executed several fast glissandi runs with impressive accuracy.

Shortly after that, though, Schuch returned to the contemplative, soft playing that dominated the recital. He concluded with La vallée des cloches, a selection from Ravel’s Miroirs. A tone painting written on three staves, it depicts a variety of ringing bells, from heavy Parisian church bells to sweet, hand-held bells. At one point Schuch crossed his left hand over his right, to flick two small bells.

The piano recitals continue later this month, when Washington Performing Arts presents András Schiff (October 26) and Evgeny Kissin (October 28).

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

Charles T. Downey, Library of Congress’s contemporary music show scores
Washington Post, April 11, 2014

E. Rautavaara, String Quintet No. 1 (inter alia), Sibelius Quartet, J.-E. Gustafsson (Ondine, 1998)

The past week’s concert schedule has been loaded with contemporary music, from an anniversary celebration for Louis Andriessen to a residency by British composer Oliver Knussen. In the midst of it all, the Library of Congress hosted a performance of yet more recent music on Thursday night, as part of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s touring program. A slate of musicians performed selections from the last two decades, which were paired with the monumental “Quartet for the End of Time” by Olivier Messiaen.

Pierre Jalbert’s... [Continue reading]

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
Music by Jalbert, Carter, Rautavaara, Messiaen
Library of Congress

SEE ALSO:
Einojuhani Rautavaara, Rasputin (2006) | Percussion concerto with BSO
Rautavaara's conclusion to Sibelius's sixth symphony (Vienna Symphony)

Paul Jacobs @ Kennedy Center

Charles T. Downey, Organist Paul Jacobs offers refined performance at Kennedy Center (Washington Post, February 7, 2014)

Messiaen, Le Livre du Saint-Sacrement, P. Jacobs (Naxos, 2010)

Whatever happened to those good, old head-to-head competitions between composers or performers? Scarlatti once competed against Handel in Rome, ending in a draw on the harpsichord but Handel having the upper hand on the organ. Bach was scheduled to do musical battle with Louis Marchand, but the French organist fled before the meeting could take place. Mozart vied with Muzio Clementi before the emperor of Austria, who declared the match a tie.

A virtuoso contest of this sort would have been a great way to celebrate the installation of the new Rubenstein Family Organ in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. In our less competitive age, a recital series will have to do, and the inaugural version continued on Wednesday night with a concert by American organist Paul Jacobs. If the first concert in the series, back in October and featuring Cameron Carpenter, was about flamboyance, Jacobs offered a program, on the theme of “Music in Paris,” that was about refinement. Seeing these two artists, who represent opposite temperaments in many ways, compete with one another, rather than in series, would be interesting to say the least. [Continue reading]

Paul Jacobs, organ
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

PREVIOUSLY:
Charles T. Downey, Cameron Carpenter (October 18, 2013)

Ionarts-at-Large: Mariss Jansons' Birthday Turangalîla

Edit: You can listen to this performance via the Bavarian Radio's free on demand stream here.

At 8:02PM, Friday January 11^th, I wondered how Mariss Jansons in seemingly out-of-character Messiaen—specifically the Turangalîla Symphony—would sound like. Would Messiaen’s central part of his Tristan & Isolde triptych, this “love song” and “hymn to joy” (Messiaen), really be up Jansons’ alley?

Read more »

Getting in the Spirit: Alt-Christmas

On Sunday evening, there were two Christmas concerts after my own heart. This is not really a review, because of my friendly connection to the performers, but more an appreciation. First, Jeremy Filsell gave an organ recital at Washington National Cathedral, with a rare complete performance of Olivier Messiaen's La Nativité du Seigneur. It is a fairly youthful work, composed when Messiaen was still in his 20s, but it still hits all the hallmarks of the composer's intensely mystical style, just with a few more plain triads, fewer hallucinatory bird songs, and some unexpected humor. Filsell chose some exciting registrations: glowing stained-glass colors, whirring intense sounds, brassy theater organ fanfare, ominous low reeds clustered like bagpipes. In a pithy presentation on the work beforehand, Filsell explained some of the pictorial devices Messiaen embedded in the score, and many of them popped out in the performance, like the pastoral cantillation of the shepherds, the crunchy dissonant chords in time-suspending rhythmic patterns (hints of the Quatuor pour la fin du temps), the chaotic dancing of the angels, the heavy-footed slog of the wise men's camels. While parts of the piece are slow, even spare, there are some technical challenges, played here as thrilling toccatas.

Later that evening, it was out to the wilds of Virginia with my passport in hand for the second Christmas concert from the local all-male choir known as the Suspicious Cheese Lords. The venue kind enough to host the ensemble was Holy Spirit Catholic Church, one of those wood-and-carpet mid-20th-century buildings, with an acoustic that sounds like a living room. Still, this concert gets high marks for programming, proof yet again that Christmas programming really does not need to regurgitate Messiah and countless other tired pieces. The Lords, as is their wont, fed us with mostly unknown Renaissance motets, by the likes of Gregorio Turini, Leonhard Paminger, Melchor Robledo, Ivo de Vento, Dominique Phinot (an expansive Ave Maria, somber except for a glorious opening up at the words "O mater dei"), Giovanni Nanino, and Francesco de Layolle, all worth knowing.

More recent pieces were just as alluring, including the moody Christmas processional Voici la nuit (featured in the splendid film Of Gods and Men), Stephen Sametz's catchy, hocket-like Noel!, the austere American hymn Shepherds Rejoice (from The Sacred Harp), and the magnificent Three Kings by Canadian composer Healey Willan, who is always worth discovering further. Russell Weismann, organist and Associate Director of Music at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (where I sang for many years in the choir), added some unusual organ selections to the mix, from the theatrical use of bells and Zimbelstern in Richard Purvis's setting of Greensleeves to the crazy toccata of Keith Chapman's take on Bring a Torch, Jeannette, Isabella.

Knussen's Latest Turn with the NSO

Charles T. Downey, Oliver Knussen takes risks with National Symphony Orchestra
Washington Post, November 4, 2011

Knussen Conducts Knussen, London Sinfonietta

When musicians venture outside their comfort zone, the risk-taking can be thrilling. The same is true for audiences.

After British composer and conductor Oliver Knussen’s last appearance with the National Symphony Orchestra — as part of an intense CrossCurrents festival in 2009 — it was no surprise that his latest appearance at the podium of the Kennedy Center Concert Hall brought challenges as well as rewards. On Thursday night, the NSO tackled three of the four pieces on this somewhat daunting program for the first time in its history — with not quite even results.

The concert opened with “Wanderlust,” a three-movement narrative escapade by Nevada-born Sean Shepherd that premiered in 2009. Shepherd splashes sound at a large orchestral canvas, with a surfeit of percussion, to evoke desert howls or the Brittenesque surge of the ocean. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Charles T. Downey, Mo' Modern: Knussen Keeps It New (Ionarts, May 9, 2009)

Articles by Sean Shepherd (NewMusicBox)

Quatuor pour la fin du temps, 70th Anniversary

Read my review published today in the Style section of the Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey, Inscape performs ‘Quartet for the End of Time’ at National Gallery of Art
Washington Post, April 5, 2011

Trio Wanderer, P. Moraguès R. Rischin, For the End of Time: The Story of the Messiaen Quartet

In January 1941, Olivier Messiaen premiered his “Quartet for the End of Time,” in a performance by the composer and three other prisoners in a German war camp. Two months later, the National Gallery of Art was dedicated in Washington, to house the artworks collected by Andrew W. Mellon. The museum commemorated both of these anniversaries Sunday, with a performance of Messiaen’s landmark quartet in the West Garden Court of the West Building.

Like much of Messiaen’s music, the piece depicts a mystical scene, the cessation of the flow of time at the end of the world, based on words in the biblical book of Revelation. Rhythmic patterns drawn from classical Indian music, harmonies from Messiaen’s synesthesia-inspired vocabulary of chord colors, and the composer’s dissonant transcription of bird song converge to give the sense of time being suspended, by an angel heralded by trumpets in a “dance of fury” and crowned by rainbows. [Continue reading]

Messiaen, Quatuor pour la fin du temps
70th anniversary of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time / 70th anniversary of the National Gallery of Art
Inscape Chamber Music Project
National Gallery of Art

"Never have I been listened to with such attention and such understanding." -- Messiaen's description of the first performance of Quatuor pour la fin du temps, at Stalag VIII-A in Görlitz, Germany (currently Zgorzelec, Poland) on January 15, 1941

FURTHER THOUGHTS:

• Alex Ross for The New Yorker
  
• Cambridge Music Handbook by Anthony Pople
  
• Messiaen's 100th anniversary in 2008
  
• Some new recordings of the quartet
  
• Lots of other recordings
  
• Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, A POW's Awe-Inspiring Act of Faith (Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2011)

NSO Turangalîla a Wild Ride

Messiaen, Turangalîla-Symphonie / L'Ascension, F. Weigel, T. Bloch, Polish Radio Orchestra and Chorus, A. Wit Messiaen, Turangalîla-Symphonie, Y. Loriod, J. Loriod, Orchestre de l'Opéra Bastille, M.-W. Chung

It was disappointing to see what is perhaps the jewel in the crown of Christoph Eschenbach's first season with the National Symphony Orchestra, Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie, play to a tragically undersold house on Friday night. The sales results should remind those responsible for programming decisions, and not just here in Washington, of two apparent truths. The first is that crossover programming may sell tickets to one concert but will not necessarily translate into further sales: the crowds of Indian listeners who came to hear last week's concerts featuring three popular Bollywood musicians were nowhere in evidence this week, although Turangalîla's connections to Indian music were ostensibly performed in connection with the Kennedy Center's maximum INDIA festival, too. The second is that packaging a work like Turangalîla, which some conservative listeners think, rightly or wrongly, that they should dislike, with something a little easier to swallow would have been a wise choice.

The sprawling Turangalîla-Symphonie is a dazzling, even stultifying piece that merits all of the epithets, kind and unkind, leveled at it over the years: most famously, Boulez dismissed it as "bordello music" for its obvious orgasmic moments (inspired by Messiaen's love for Yvonne Loriod, who would become his second wife) and Stravinsky said the work contained more embarrassment than riches ("plus d'embarras que de richesses") adding that "little more is needed to write such music than a copious supply of ink." Like so much of Messiaen's music, it binds together an impossible number of references and influences -- Indian rhythmic patterns, bird song, Tristan and Isolde, and much more -- with a vast orchestral palette, almost too large, too loud to absorb with the human ear. To hear it in live performance, even a less than perfect one like that led by Eschenbach, is an unforgettable experience.

A surreal paean to cosmic love, both celestial and terrestrial, it swoons and shrieks with the sound of the Ondes Martenot, played expertly in this performance by French composer Tristan Murail. Murail's sound was sultry in places, but could also be piercingly loud, with a slight dull ring in my right ear the following morning indicating that the amplification level was set too high for comfortable listening. On the virtuosic piano part, central enough to the work that it is sometimes considered a piano concerto, Cédric Tiberghien was both suave and manic, if at times too reserved when he needed to be crushingly loud. The orchestra was at its best in the more savage parts, like the low brass's rocky solidity in the "statue theme," which Messiaen said reminded him of ancient Mexican sculpture. I think of the tzomplanti, the skull rack, at the Aztec Templo Mayor, which resonates with the wild clatter of percussion in the creepy seventh movement, evoking the horrors of Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum.

The slow passages were appropriately suspended beyond time, especially the sixth movement ("Jardin du sommeil d'amour"), which Eschenbach took at an especially glacial tempo, allowing the bird songs (nightingale, blackbird, garden warbler, according to Messiaen) in the piano an almost languorous lack of affect. (In the conversation with members of the audience after the performance, Eschenbach said he wished that this movement was twice as long, which explains his tempo choice. It left at least one child in the audience sound asleep, as her father carried her out of the hall.) Only the dance movements, especially where there were many shifts of meter like the tenth, sounded off-kilter occasionally -- at least some of the problems were minor conflicts between the glockenspiel, celesta, and piano, grouped together at the front of the stage but not always in sync with one another. It was a significant achievement, a sign of just how big Eschenbach's thinking is for the NSO's future, if not quite a great performance.

Other Articles: Robert Battey, 'Turangalila's' majestic sweep soars above the flaws (Washington Post, March 11) Terry Ponick, Where Messiaen and Radiohead converge (Washington Times, March 10)

More of an audience may have turned out if, instead of a rather boring, didactic round-table discussion on the first half, the concert had opened with some music easier to sell to the subscription base. Perhaps featuring pianist Cédric Tiberghien, already here to play the fiendishly difficult piano part in Turangalîla, in one of the shorter Mozart concertos? A quick look at his repertoire list shows that he plays no. 11 and 12, both a little over 20 minutes long, for example. In fact, there are many good options on that list: perhaps more programmatically appropriate would be Les Djinns of Franck, about twelve minutes long -- or less satisfyingly, Symphonic Variations, a couple minutes longer. Of course, rehearsal time was already at a premium, and Tiberghien may not have wanted to play anything more than the two Messiaen preludes and arrangement of part of the Quatuor pour la fin du temps, with Murail on Ondes Martenot, that he contributed to the round-table introduction. As it was, not much was said among Murail, Tiberghien, Eschenbach, and facilitator Joseph Horowitz to have made it worth sacrificing the chance to attract more listeners with some other music.

This concert will be repeated this evening (March 12, 8 pm), in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

'Turangalîla' Opens Tonight

This preview was cross-posted at DCist:

Christoph Eschenbach is nearing the end of an extraordinary first year as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra. A season of rather remarkable programming reaches its spiritual pinnacle with this week's concerts, when the NSO will give three performances of one of the monuments of the 20th-century orchestral repertoire, Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie (March 10-12). Eschenbach's predecessor, Leonard Slatkin, led a performance of this immense and phantasmagorical work ten years ago, and Eschenbach returns to it in the context of this month's maximum INDIA festival at the Kennedy Center (some of the rhythmic patterns in the work are based on Indian Tālas). Messiaen derived the work's title from two Sanskrit words meaning "the flow of time" and "cosmic play," and he described it as a "love song and hymn of joy, time, movement, rhythm, life, and death."

Typically for this visionary French modernist, he explores these cosmic concepts in music of mystical intensity, using one of the strangest orchestral palettes ever assembled, including the unclassifiable electronic instrument known as the ondes Martenot and an enormous battery of exotic percussion. In live performance, it creates an otherworldly soundscape quite unlike any other. For all its Indian and French influences, the work has an American connection: Messiaen composed the piece in the 1940s, for a commission from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and a young conductor named Leonard Bernstein ended up conducting the premiere. Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, once reported that cartoonist Matt Groening is a huge fan of Messiaen, and even named one of the characters on Futurama after the Turangalîla-Symphonie. Each of the NSO's performances will begin with an introduction to the work, hosted by scholar Joseph Horowitz and featuring Christoph Eschenbach, pianist Cédric Tiberghien and composer Tristan Murail, who will undertake playing the ondes Martenot. For more background on the Turangalîla-Symphonie, watch this series of videos, containing a performance of the score "narrated" by Messiaen's comments about the work.

The NSO performs the work this evening (starting at 7 pm), and Friday and Saturday (both starting at 8 pm). Tickets range from $20 to $85. Those between the ages of 17 and 25 should register for the Kennedy Center's Attend! program, to qualify for reduced-price tickets as low as $10, at the Thursday and Friday performances.

'You speak to God in music: He will respond in music'

Messiaen, Saint François d'Assise (dir. P. Audi), C. Tilling, R. Gilfry, De Nederlandse Opera, I. Metzmacher (released on April 28, 2009) Opus Arte OA 1007 D | 4h35 Live recording, Salzburg Festival, 1998 (Upshaw, Van Dam, Nagano)

For some years, I have waited -- beyond hope, apparently -- for the production of Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise at the Bastille to be released on DVD. The reviewers of the 2004 staging noted some weaknesses -- director Stanislas Nordey and his set designer Emmanuel Clolus received resounding boos for their non-traditional production (no Franciscan habits, for example), it was hard to hear Jose Van Dam in the title role, and Christine Schäfer's French, as the angel, was not exactly idiomatic -- but still it was one of the triumphs of the tenure of Gerard Mortier in Paris. (It is one of the Belgian's favorite contemporary operas, and he also brought it to the Salzburg Festival when he was there, from which the reference recording on CD, also linked at right, was taken.) Well, that version has yet to appear, but the first and so far only version of Saint François on DVD appeared just last year, made during a 2008 staging of the work at De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam. Incredibly, this 3-DVD set has now been discounted to under half its original price, far cheaper than the CD version mentioned above.

It is also a beautiful and striking performance of this devastating work: although considered an opera, it was mentioned in my list of the best works of sacred music in the 20th century. Pierre Audi's staging is quite austere, with Franciscan habits made of quilted rags (costumes by Angelo Figus), most structures of the set looking like construction scaffolding (sets and lighting by Jean Kalman), and lots of wood planks nailed together. (The Leper's funny yellow-and-black striped costume reminded me of a sign at a construction site.) In the evocative second act, a midnight sky of stars and moonlight is seen through an oval hole above the stage. It goes dark as the angel appears in one of the central tableaux, costumed in something like a multi-colored raincoat, as if wrapped in a stained glass window, to play the mystical viol solo that communicates the joy of the blessed: she holds up two glowing filaments and touches them together as the unearthly sound of the Ondes Martenot is heard. The sound world of the opera, which Messiaen once grandly described as encompassing his entire compositional vocabulary (all the bird songs he catalogued, all his scales, all his prismatic chords), is haunting: not only the constant avian shrieks (sometimes, perhaps, a little grating) but those more fleeting, otherworldly echoes, like the celestial dissonance of the Sanctus that haunts Francis.

As the Angel, Camilla Tilling shows a voice of beauty, strength, versatility: distinguished already in Handel, Bach, and Strauss, she also excels in a more dissonant idiom. For a reference copy, it would be preferable to have Jose van Dam, the creator of the role, as St. Francis, but Rod Gilfry performs with both vocal and physical intensity. There are no complaints in the supporting roles, either. At the podium, Ingo Metzmacher is excellent, even though he was placed at the back of the stage -- with that enormous orchestra -- which must have caused problems with the balance with the singers (a pit at least affording some cover over the instruments). Probably as a result, the sound of this DVD seems to have been engineered, perhaps rebalanced, and then retimed to the video, in a way that is just slightly off at places. Still, a worthy addition for anyone interested in contemporary opera.

Susanna Phillips: Superlative

Read my review today on the Washington Post Web site:

Charles T. Downey, Soprano Phillips: languid legato
Washington Post, November 5, 2009

Susanna Phillips, soprano (photo by Ken Howard)

Soprano Susanna Phillips, in the area to perform with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra this weekend, gave an exceptionally beautiful recital on Tuesday night in the auditorium of Alexandria's Bishop Ireton High School. Those in attendance received a preview of the delectable program of songs Phillips will present later this month at the Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall. Even better, the proceeds went to support the creation of a summer music camp for the students of Mount Vernon Woods Elementary School.

Phillips has a charming stage presence in operatic roles, but her greatest strength may be as a singer of lieder. As in her Vocal Arts Society recital in 2007, Phillips sang with a tone of consummate beauty, strength and consistency, a voice suited more to the spinning out of flowing legato line than to pyrotechnical acrobatics. In songs like "Adieu," part of a languid Fauré set, she savored the unctuous flow of the melody wrapped around the poetry, even when high notes coincided with unstressed syllables. The song's long final high note hovered in the air without any sign of flagging breath support, until it gradually vanished. [Continue reading]

Susanna Phillips (soprano) and Craig Terry (piano)
Bishop Ireton High School (Alexandria, Va.)

Previously on Ionarts:
Don Giovanni (Santa Fe Opera, 2009) | Le Nozze di Figaro (Santa Fe Opera, 2008) | Recital with Wolfgang Holzmair (Vocal Arts Society, 2007)

Ionarts at Large: Munich Messiaen 2008

Over the last few decades, the music of Olivier Messiaen has become slowly but increasingly accepted by subscription audiences, even in Germany. Spearheading that trend was – and still is – the fantabulous Turangalîla Symphony that Messiaen created between 1946 and 48, a work that dazzles, stuns, and impresses - sometimes almost too much for its own good. But his other orchestral and organ works are increasingly accepted into the outer fringes of the mainstream repertoire, too. His organ compositions and improvisations, especially during Messiaen’s life-long service as organist on the 46-stop Cavaillé-Coll organ at La Trinité (where he had been appointed at age 22, upon recommendation of Widor), once shocked, confused, and confounded the clergy and congregation during midday mass. Now they draw (and hold) audiences that would hesitate attending a Prokofiev or Bartók concert.

The mystic element of Messiaen’s music, the wash of colorful sounds, and the underlying re-assuring, joyous nature of his music strikes more and more listeners as relevant, intriguing, and even beautiful. Consequently his 100^th birthday has been celebrated by the record industry with some fanfare. Deutsche Grammophone brought out a 32-CD box with his complete works, EMI one (18 CDs) with a good selection of orchestral, chamber, piano, and organ works (the latter played by the composer), Haenssler the perhaps finest collection of his orchestral works, Warner already issued their extensive Messiaen Box two years ago, Naïve threw together a collection of live recordings on six discs, and a host of labels brought us new quartets for the end of time. Compared to Carter, who most notably gets a (belated) recording of his complete string quartets (Naxos), that’s pretty impressive.

On the concert front, he’s not seen the same attention, but at least I’ve been able to catch the Berlin Philharmonic’s Salzburg tribute (Turangalîla) this summer. In Munich, only one orchestra did the honors. Of all the big cultural institutions in Munich, interestingly it was the Munich Philharmonic with its relatively conservative audience that gave Messiaen his only birthday tribute. Not the Bavarian State Orchestra (where, in Kent Nagano, an excellent Messiaen interpreter holds the reigns) nor the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra more likely to explore musical territory off the well traveled path of standards and classics.

The Munich Philharmonic’s Messiaen trilogy opened by luring Kent Nagano away from Wozzeck for a few days, across the river and presenting Des canyons aux étoiles… . Since his appointment as MD of the State Opera in 2005, Kent Nagano has made his home in Munich east of the river Isar, but it took him until this concert series – November 21^st to November 23^rd – when he made his first appearance with the Munich Philharmonic to also work there. (Now we await that Opera GM Klaus Bachler will return the favor and bring Christian Thielemann into the Bavarian State Opera's pit.)

The Utah-inspired, gargantuan (100+ minute) masterpiece that is Des canyons aux étoiles… was commissioned by Alice Tully for the United States’ bicentenary. This makes Des canyons Messiaen’s second important “American” work after Turangalîla – and a personal declaration of love to the nature of Bryce Canyon, its birds and colorful rock formations. Although Messiaen stuck to the limitations of the orchestra’s size (43), he went well beyond the originally estimated duration of 20 minutes. Tully ended up getting a lot more music than she had bargained for, but surely had no reason to complain.

The 20^th century’s most important catholic composer, whose deeply felt love for the miracle of God’s creation, man & nature alike, is so fully expressed in his work, was given an exciting, boldly colored treatment by Nagano who talked about Messiaen’s music-as-faith well enough (between parts II and III), even if his literal interpretation was more successful expressing rhythmic and musical detail than any underlying faith. Not surprisingly, parts one and two – about nature and man, ending not unlike a Strauss tone poem with “Bryce Canyon…”– were more convincing than part three about the heavens and whatever might be beyond the stars. Marino Formenti (piano) and Ivo Gass (solo horn) delivered everything that might be expected of them – with an even greater chance for Gass to distinguish himself in the seven minute long horn solo fifth movement, Appel interstellaire, than for Formenti in the solo-piano movements Le Cossyphe d’Heuglin – all about the African Robin-Chat – and Le Moqueur polyglotte, “The Mockingbird”. What a tribute to the beauty of Utah’s – America’s – nature and its various birds. Among them the Baltimore Oriole in the piano passages of the second movement, Les Orioles, and the Gray-Cheeked Thrush in the third movement, Ce qui est écrit sur les Étoiles.

Turangalîla had to get it’s outing, too, of course. Jun Märkl conducted, Steven Osborne and Philippe Arrieus played the piano and onde martenot, respectively. The orchestral colors Märkl evoked were loud bordering gaudy, solid and saturated. The orchestra worked like clockwork, was plenty loud and offered a good amount of sweep, romantic-dense in tone, and not particularly very transparent. Rattle, in comparison, managed his Berliners toward a more diaphanous, more trim, but equally explosive sound. Arrieus made the onde martenot whistle sweet sounds (Chant d’amour 1) into the midst of the Philharmonic Hall that could have come from the Twilight Zone (“Aliens falling in love”). The clarinet – onde martenot exchanges of Turangalîla 1, the accuracy of the playing in Chant d’amour 2, the Gershwinean Wild-West swing of Joie du sang de Étoiles – it was all marvelous, if never particularly subtle. Slighter, more refined touches entered the work starting with the sixth movement Jardin du sommeil d’amour where Osborne and the orchestra responded more sensitively to nuances.

A slender Zubin Mehta stepped unto the rostrum in Philharmonic Hall of the Gasteig to lead the third installation of the Munich Philharmonic’s Messiaen tribute. The dark, grumbling, color-shifting moods of Messiaen’s Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum – written only for winds, brass, and percussion – were more an opportunity for the players of the Munich Philharmonic to distinguish themselves than for Mehta to make a particularly deep impression as a Messiaen conductor. The players took that chance: solo oboist, clarinetist, the cor anglais, and the flute impressed with round, warm sounds over an array of intricate Indian rhythms banged out on big gongs and temple bells.

The 1964 composition was intended by the commissioning French Department of Culture’s André Malraux to be a Requiem for the French victims of World War II. Messiaen subverted the commission “catholic style” and wrote a work on the resurrection of all souls. And what a work it is: With dark, strange sounds and mesmerizing rhythmic assurance it attains an old fashioned patina on modern sounds; it conveys a great level of comfort even though it is dissonant from head to toe.

Messiaen, who knew a thing or two about writing effective music (Turangalîla) makes rousing use of the percussion apparatus (especially the booming tam-tam) and creates an orchestral sound with 18 winds and 16 brass that might have you thinking that strings are dispensable, altogether. Well – strings aren’t, but Bernstein’s Kaddish Symphony is.

Bernstein’s pompous third symphony is a public ego-trip down "Leonard Bernstein Emotion-Land". The music -- the usual hodge-podge from bits of dodecaphony to Broadway tunes -- doesn’t help the pseudo-rebellious, insolent and presumptuous way of Bernstein dealing with his troubled adolescence, a dominant father, and his unsettled relationship with the creator. If I were God and had someone talk to me as Bernstein does in this work (“Forgive me [Father…] / But Yours was the first mistake / Creating man in Your own image, tender / Fallible.”), I might let myself get carried away and do some smiting: “Freak Subway Accident Kills Conductor/Composer on Night of Symphony Premiere”.

It’s more than slightly embarrassing to listen to the narrator’s (Mervan Mehta) self-righteous, accusatory, pompously spiritual, and juvenile text: “Why have You taken your rainbow / That pretty bow You tied around Your finger…”. Mr Mehta jr. was not to blame – he did a terrific job in delivering these lines. Animated, well enunciated, compelling even. Then again, he and his father were to blame, because their fine contributions only enhanced the text’s pathetic-ness underlined by Hans Zimmer style movie-music moments. When there are so many wonderful American composers - why Bernstein. And if Bernstein - why this work? One hopes not too many in the audience bothered to follow or understand the text.

Messiaen for the New Year: Early Songs

Messiaen, Chants de Terre et de Ciel (inter alia), S. LeBlanc, L. Wiliford, L. Andriani, R. Kortgaard (released September 30, 2008) Atma Classique ACD2 2564 Previously: La Fête des Belles Eaux | Quatuor pour la fin du temps | Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus | Messiaen Complete Edition

In our continuing extension of the celebrations for the Olivier Messiaen Centenary this month, there is this new release of early works for voice and violin, all composed in Messiaen's early period, the happy days of his first marriage to Claire Delbos and the birth of their son, Pascal. Some of these songs may be familiar to listeners as performed by Dawn Upshaw, but it is good to have complete recordings of the sets Trois mélodies (from 1930, dedicated to the composer's late mother, the poet Cécile Sauvage) and Chants de terre et de ciel (from the late 1930s, about the composer's wife and newborn child). Canadian soprano Suzie LeBlanc, whom we have reviewed on disc and in concert in the last few years, has an optimal voice for this repertoire, which has something in common with the Baroque music she is known best for singing. The only shame is that she did not also record Poèmes pour Mi, also dedicated to Claire Delbos (by her nickname, Mi) and the companion set to Chants de terre et de ciel, composed in the same period. LeBlanc and American tenor Lawrence Wiliford are strongest in floating soft lines, while both become just slightly strident when force is applied. Violinist Laura Andriani and pianist Robert Kortgaard round out a very pleasing disc, which focuses on the heritage of Debussy and Ravel: while Poulenc and others went ever closer to the extended harmony of popular song and jazz, Messiaen took the same basic vocabulary and went in a completely unexpected and singular direction.

55'11"

Messiaen for the New Year: Ondes Martenot Sextet

Messiaen, La Fête des Belles Eaux (inter alia), Ensemble d'Ondes de Montréal (released November 18, 2008) Atma Classique ACD2 2621

We have been happily observing the Olivier Messiaen Centenary this fall, with reviews of the Quatuor pour la fin du temps, the Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus, and even a high ranking for the Messiaen Complete Edition from DG by Jens. To take you into the new year in a celestial frame of mind, a few other discs have come across my desk recently that may be of interest. The first is this release from the Ensemble d'Ondes de Montréal, the only recording available of Messiaen's first work for Ondes Martenot (except on the above-mentioned complete set from DG). For the 1937 World's Fair in Paris (also when Picasso's Guernica was exhibited in the Spanish Pavilion), Messiaen was one of twenty composers commissioned to provide music for a nighttime display of fireworks and artificial water geysers along the Seine. He wrote La Fête des Belles Eaux, a substantial work for an ensemble of six of the new electronic instruments, then less than a decade since its invention. This intriguing, at times mind-blowing disc shows Messiaen exploring the entire range of the Ondes Martenot, which can apparently sound like any number of other instruments: flute, recorder, bamboo whistle, bassoon, bass clarinet, celesta, strings, electric guitar, organ. It also includes the four Feuillet inédits, for Ondes Martenot and piano (posthumously published, for Messiaen's second wife, Yvonne Loriod, and her sister Jeanne Loriod, a famous ondist), and a pleasing, somewhat space-musicky arrangement of the first movement of Ravel's F major string quartet for four Ondes Martenot (made by Ginette Martenot, sister of the instrument's inventor).

55'11"


Jean Laurendeau gives a demonstration of the Ondes Martenot

Messiaen à 100 ans

Olivier Messiaen at the Great Organ, in the South Gallery of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, D.C., during a visit on March 16, 1972 (photo by George Tames)

As noted earlier this week, Olivier Messiaen was born on December 10, one hundred years ago. Appropriately -- yet somewhat surprisingly -- La Maison Française was the only venue to offer a commemorative program. That it turned out to be a free concert, after issues with the visa for the visiting musicians cropped up, guaranteed a full auditorium at the French embassy, filled with many faces familiar to me, those of local musicians, critics, and composers. They were there to listen to a piece that all of them I spoke to referred to as life-altering, Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps, performed by four musicians from the Orchestre du Théâtre National de l'Opéra de Paris, cellist Alexis Descharmes, violinist Thibault Vieux (who is the orchestra's assistant concertmaster), clarinetist Jérôme Julien-Laferrière, and pianist Jean-Marie Cottet.

Carter, Works for Cello, A. Descharmes

Before that work, reserved for the second half, we were also treated to the observation of another 100th birthday, that of Elliott Carter, who has actually lived long enough to witness his own centenary on Thursday, with a big cake at Carnegie Hall. Alexis Descharmes is known for his devotion to contemporary composers, as his fine recordings of the complete works for cello by living composers, including Kaija Saariaho and Elliott Carter, have shown. He anchored this beautifully crafted set of Carter pieces, opening with the 1948 cello sonata, a work more in Carter's Nadia Boulanger-influenced neoclassical style. Like Matt Haimovitz, who played the piece a couple months ago here, Descharmes milked the lyrical cello line of the first movement, presented over a quasi-Baroque walking bass texture in the piano. The second movement was a light-hearted scherzo, with fizzy pizzicati and staccato touches in the piano, and the cello cantillation in the slow movement was fervent, although Descharmes's tone high on the A string sometimes wobbled wide of the mark.

The more traditional sound was bookended by Carter's 1944 Elegy, arranged by Descharmes for the same instrumentation as Messiaen's Quatuor, the Coplandesque dewiness, bordering on the grotesquely lacrymose, forming a misty-eyed tribute to Carter. In between were five detailed miniatures for the players' respective solo instruments, all composed in the last decade of the 20th century. Descharmes has already proven himself at La Maison Française, but it was here that his colleagues showed their chops, especially Julien-Laferrière, whose rendition of Gra for solo clarinet, from 1993, was an encyclopedic game of textures, attacks, and melodic interest, with an exemplary tone that did not get shrill in the stratosphere. The overtone effects called for by Carter in this piece were ghostly.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Elliott Carter at 100: His Candle Still Burns (Washington Post, December 15)

The quartet's rendition of the Messiaen Quatuor fell on the short side of average timings, at 50 minutes with pauses in between. The tempo choices gave a cursory quality to some of the movements, especially seeming to cheat the eternity and immortality of Jesus (nos. 5 and 8), although the dissolve from fortissimo al niente at the end of the fifth movement was beautiful, like ice melting away under sudden heat. Time slowed but did not seem to cease, as it can in more extravagantly slow performances. The effect was worsened, surprisingly, by the slightly prosaic approach of Cottet to the many repeated chords in the piano part, which were skillfully voiced but often seemed too much like one another. Some of the most effective playing came in the first movement, Liturgie de crystal, where the sense of time being charted, separated, recombined came across in the flowing ostinato of piano chords and the disembodied sound of the sliding cello. As forecast in the Carter set, clarinetist Julien-Laferriere was the centerpiece, with breathtaking (-giving) control in the third movement’s notes that crescendo from nothing to crushing power. It was a performance with many good parts that did not quite add up to something great.

The inauguration of Barack Obama has scuttled the plans at La Maison Française to host François-Frédéric Guy playing the complete sonatas of Beethoven in January. However, he will be featured in their next concert -- just one -- on January 22.

Messiaen at the End of Time

Beatrice and Dante in Paradiso, engraving by Gustave Doré

"In His eternity, beyond time, beyond
any other limit, as it pleased Him,
in these new loves, Eternal Love unfolded.
Nor, before then, did He rest in torpor,
for until God moved upon these waters
there existed no 'before', there was no 'after'.
Form and matter, conjoined and separate,
came into being without defect,
shot like three arrows from a three-stringed bow.
And, as a ray shines right through glass, amber,
or crystal, so that between its presence
and its shining there is no lapse of time,
just so did the threefold creation flash --
with no intervals in its beginning --
from its Lord into being, all at once."

-- Beatrice tries to explain God's creation of the angels, before time began (Dante, Paradiso, Canto 29, trans. Robert Hollander)

Trio Wanderer, P. Moraguès Gould Piano Trio, R. Plane

Times means nothing to the immortal soul of Olivier Messiaen now, but the celebrated French composer was born 100 years ago today. Anyone in Washington who wants to celebrate the event by passing out of time should join me at La Maison Française this evening, when cellist Alexis Descharmes and other musicians from the orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris will perform Messiaen's early work, the Quatuor pour la fin du temps. (Marvelously, the concert has already sold out.) Earlier this fall, I reviewed a couple of new recordings of the work, one of the most moving ever composed, and Jens has surveyed the discography more thoroughly for WETA.

R. Rischin, For the End of Time: The Story of the Messiaen Quartet

To learn more about Olivier Messiaen and the various perspectives from which to approach his music -- Catholic, mystical, ethnomusicological, liturgical, ornithological -- we have already recommended the documentary by Olivier Mille, Olivier Messiaen: La liturgie de cristal, which is available now on DVD. For more information on the Quatuor, it is essential to read the ground-breaking study of the work's history by Rebecca Rischin, For the End of Time: The Story of the Messiaen Quartet, published in 2003 (with the caveat to see also Nigel Simeone's review in the Musical Times, which includes a meticulous fact-checking of the book). Nothing from the BSO or the NSO, which are too busy with performances of Messiah and holiday craptaculars, so no Turangalîla-Symphonie for us. If anyone knows of any other performances of Messiaen's music in Washington this week, please note them in the comments section.

Munich Mornings with Bach and Messiaen

O.Messiaen, Des Canyons aux Étoiles..., Myung Whung Chung / French RPO DG J.S.Bach, Complete-complete Organ Works, Gerhard Weinberger cpo

A Sunday (November 23rd) starts well with Messiaen's "Des Canyons aux Étoiles..." (see review here), followed by a white sausage / wheat beer breakfast. Today, the mini-Messiaen Festival of the Munich Philharmonic will continue with the Turangalîla Symphony.

Messiaen and Bavarian morning-meat behind me, I have the massive cpo box of Bach's complete organ works in front of me... and when they mean complete, they mean complete! The series collects all that was written for the Queen of instruments by Bach proper and apocryphal works, combining 21 individual volumes on 22 CDs into one solid two-inch thick box. Gerhard Weinberger, who also wrote the notes (apparently only in English, but perhaps that's because I have the edition distributed in North American), plays mostly on 18th century instruments in Saxony and Thuringia to get as close to the sound that Bach probably had mind (and his ears) when composing (and playing) these works. Weinberger ends with "Die Kunst der Fuge", which was recently released as volume 21 of the series. Weinberger doesn't aim for bombast (near-impossible, with the instruments he plays, anyway), and he is not the most impressive in the 'biggest hits' works. The organ on volume 20 (Carl Christian Hofmann Organ, St.Marien Mecterstädt, 1770) is tuned in a way that cannot please my ears and Die Kunst der Fuge I have heard more to my liking, elsewhere. But apart from those quibbles regarding the last three of 22 CDs, it is a magnificent set taking, among complete sets, pride of place in my collection.

A small detail that delighted me very much: the über-famous Toccata & Fugue in d (BWV 565) is actually, honestly included on one of the "Works of doubtful authenticity" (a euphemism for "not by Bach") discs (v.19). I'm not quite sure why I like that factoid so much… perhaps because this forces us to loosen our standards and categories of "great" and makes us acknowledge how we selectively listen to music because of the tags attached to it?