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CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW Engaging Messiaen September 22, 2002
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By Miguel Galperin
For Sunday evening's “Messiaen Celebration” at UC Berkeley's Hertz Hall his Quartet for the end of Time seemed destined to be the most important work of the concert. What actually happened was that soprano Laura Claycomb's rendering of the Songs of Earth and Heaven took over. She and Peter Grunberg, at the piano, drove through the bumpy terrain that this song cycle proposes with such delicacy that nothing else mattered. Laura Claycomb is just something else, commanding what seems to be an infinitely expressive voice.
With the help of impeccable French diction, Claycomb was able to deliver Messiaen's own text (a celebration in itself, of the composer's own family, wife Mi and son Pascal) with precision, to the point of creating a “character” that had a life of its own, transcending each individual song. Grunberg was impressive, too, as he responded to the “illusion-of-color challenge” that Messiaen proposes to his pianists. His accompaniment was sensitive enough to engage Ms. Claycomb in a dialogue whose conclusion was pure beauty.
The Quartet for the End of Time, one of Messiaen's most influential pieces, was also presented on this concert by Robin Sutherland, piano; Luis Baez, clarinet; Peter Wyrick, cello; and Alexander Barantschik, violin. As in many of Messiaen's larger works, the Quartet has widely contrasting movements, fast and furious to deeply static. The ensemble sections (fast, unison) were engaging with their awkward powerfulness, but not enough chemistry was sensed in the ensemble. At times these sections also sounded a bit too rushed and rough. The slower, mostly solo sections compensated. Messiaen felt that there was a connection between musical slowness and the spirit's susceptibility to the Divine. The performers responded to this idea with a perfect mix of sobriety and intensity. Baez was particularly effective; his clarinet lightly exploring the full dynamic range of a long and complex unaccompanied solo.
The Quartet is also emblematic of many of Messiaen's longer pieces in that it has a very idiosyncratic macro design, and you either get it or don't. In this case, the rendition did work as a totality, a delicate feat. . Olivier Messiaen had a special relationship to time, and an enjoyable portion of it was spent celebrating his music Sunday night. The program was completed by an effective rendition of the witty Themes and Variations for Violin and Piano by Sutherland and Barantschik. It would have been fairer had the concert exposed more of Messiaen's “time ” than the 10 years of a career that extended beyond 60. This concert was, then, a preface, albeit a successful and necessary one, of what's to come in the Messiaen celebrations ahead.
(Miguel Galperin is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Davis, where he studies composition. He can be reached at mgalper@hotmail.com.)
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Laura Claycomb