I’ve often wondered if Olivier Messiaen should be elevated to the position of Sixth Evangelist, given the abundance of compositions arising from his deep-held religious convictions and his mystical preoccupations. Perhaps he already holds that honour and I am just not aware of it. What I do know is that he is a figure who probably has as many unabashed detractors as there are unrepentant hagiographers. I am of the latter persuasion, so be warned. On the evidence of the performance of the great man’s Visions de l’amen given by Charles Owen and Katya Apekisheva at the London Piano Festival, Kings Place, it seems that they too are fellow travellers. It was the kind of performance where the adjectives could be stacked in the same manner that the composer stacks his chords, but I shall try to resist that temptation.
Lasting around 45 minutes, the work is a monumental suite for two pianos exploring the four meanings of ‘Amen’ proposed by Ernest Hello, to which Messiaen added three of his own. It is elaborately constructed, a veritable tour de force utilising a self-fashioned toolkit drawn from multiple sources. To show that the contents of that toolkit are not mere artifice they must be sublimated to the performative imperative – which was the signal achievement of Owen and Apekisheva.
Across the seven movements their impressive pianism was at the service of the composer’s imaginative articulation of his mystical contemplations, as expressed thematically, harmonically and rhythmically. Their utterances were contemplative. devotional, exultant and, finally, ecstatic. The lighting design for the performance initially caught me off-guard; it seemed to be redundant as all the colours Messiaen wished to evoke are already present in the music. However, I warmed to the yellow-gold used for the final movement; together with the dancing bells ringing out from the keyboards, it conjured up not the precious stones of the Apocalypse that the composer wrote about, but a flight of angels of the species painted by Fra Angelico.
Introducing the piece, Messiaen pupil Sir George Benjamin spoke with Donald Macleod about his time as a student in Paris, emphasising that his teacher did not seek to create clones or recruit apostles. In the two pieces by him given here it was evident that he shares with Messiaen a fastidious craftsmanship and a natural gift for communication – but works at a different scale and is motivated by different means of expression. There were bells in Divisions, a four-hands etude given in vivid silverpoint by Owen and Apekisheva; they danced not in celestial ecstasy but with the sheer joy of being alive. Two or Four revealed that Benjamin may also have an interest in things with wings since the lifespan of this piece resembled that of a mayfly. It was a pity there were not more people to witness its brief existence, or to be enthralled by pianists skilled in the art of erasing any sense of time.
