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Music Review: Elder Perspectives 2013: Mark Gasser

Olivier Messiaen’s work is about love; mystical, with a back-story of romance, and if that is the case, love has never sounded so good.


Mark-Gasser
Presented by Recitals Australia and The University of Adelaide
Reviewed 11 October 2013

Nothing says, “I love you” like composing one of the most complicated piano pieces of the 20th century. Why say it with flowers when you can create a monumental masterwork for your student? Olivier Messiaen did just that for his student (and future wife) Yvonne Loriod, in war ravaged France in 1944, after his release from a German stalag.

Messiaen’s gift to his student, Vingt regards sur l’enfant-Jésus (“Twenty contemplations on the infant Jesus”) is utterly overwhelming to comprehend.

Loriod was a brilliant pianist and Messiaen was said to have indulged in “the greatest eccentricities” when writing for his piano students. There is no truer example than Vingt Regards.

Mark Gasser presented as a most unusual international performer; unassuming, friendly and humble. He opened with chat about working with Messiaen on this piece (!!), performed, and mused afterwards like he’d done nothing more than have us over for a cuppa.

Gasser’s performance of this phenomenal music was astonishing.

The pieces are said to be a meditation on childhood, and examinations have been made of the connection with the poems Messiaen’s mother wrote while pregnant with him, L’Âme en bourgeon (“The Soul in Bud”). Congruously, Gasser directed us to the concept of a baby’s heartbeat in the first piece, and all hell breaking loose in the sixth, which heralded the extraordinary beauty and the depths of despair, that graced and plummeted throughout.

A performance highlight was the tenth piece Regard de l’Esprit de Joie (“Watch of the Spirit of Joy”), which was approximately nine minutes of pure, smile evoking happiness. The seventeenth, Regard du Silence (“Watch of Silence”), which Messiaen described as “Silence of the hand, rainbow turned upside down…” revealed a perplexing koan if ever there was one.

Vingt Regards cannot be considered from a secular perspective without historical context. Messiaen, who was deeply spiritual, included themes of ‘God’, ‘Joy’, ‘the Star of the Cross’, and, most importantly, wrote of the pieces, “More than in all my preceding works, I have sought a language of mystic love…”. They have been described as Messiaen’s own spiritual diary, and Gasser played them with such depth, it was almost difficult to be there; to witness something so deeply personal.

Unusually, but perhaps not uncharacteristically, Gasser shushed the standing ovation to provide a situation report about why he played a Steinway and not a Yamaha (his sponsor’s) piano.

I hope Messiaen was correct, and there is an afterlife, because I’d need an eternity to be able to fully comprehend this piece with all its mathematical constructs and spiritual nuances. Despite being merely mortal, it was an absolute privilege to hear this work performed live.

Ultimately, the work is about love; mystical, with a back-story of romance, and if that is the case, love has never sounded so good.

Encore Mark Gasser. Come back soon.

(P.S. When Gasser invited his gorgeous girlfriend Danielle on a date for “dinner and a show”, did she know she would be in it? She did a splendid job page turning, but showed why you should never work with children, animals or manuscripts!)

Reviewed by Gordon Forester

Venue: Elder Hall, North Terrace, Adelaide
Season: 11 October 2013
Duration: 2 hours

Photo source: Yamaha

 

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