The thematic axis of the LNSO’s new winter season is “Peaks of 20th-Century Classics.”
We will encounter one such peak at the season-opening concert, listening to the French mystic Olivier Messiaen’s (1908–1992) symphony “Turangalîla” (1948). In this grand-scale masterpiece, the composer looks passionately and ardently at swiftly fleeting time and, as in a hymn to sublime love, offers us a superhuman, dazzling joy. Taking part in the performance of the symphony will be, quite possibly, this work’s most brilliant interpreter, the famous French pianist Roger Muraro. Woven into the score is also an exotic line written for one of the first electronic musical instruments – the ondes Martenot, which produces a distinctive wailing sound.
Opening the concert – one of the most beautiful works by Olivier Messiaen’s student, the outstanding composer who spent his life in Canada, Tālivaldis Ķeniņš (1919–2008): Beatae voces tenebrae (“Noble Voices of the Past”), in which the composer remembers his friends, taking as the core of these memories the immortal letter-motif BACH (the sequence of notes encoded from Johann Sebastian Bach’s surname – B flat-A-C-B natural).
The concert will be conducted by LNSO artistic director Andris Poga, for whom performing Turangalîla has long been a cherished dream.
The concert programme is available here.
Roger Muraro – piano
Nathalie Forget – ondes Martenot