Messiaen: Turangalîla-Symphonie, I/29

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Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie is a work of many layers: of meaning, of texture, of tonality, of form. Its name was a coinage by Messiaen himself, made up of two Sanskrit words: lîla, meaning play or love, and turanga, meaning time or rhythm of time. The work is scored for a huge orchestra, among whose parts are interwoven a piano -- here played by the very crisp Tamara Stefanovich -- and the ondes martenot, the pioneering electronic instrument. The tonality ranges from atonal with proto-total serial procedures to almost purely tonal, and the form contains cyclical elements. In short, this is a dense work with a great deal going on. Yet it lives up to Messiaen's description of the music as "love song, hymn to joy, time, movement, rhythm, life and death." The fourth-movement "Chant d'amour 2" is one of the few sections of a 20th century masterpiece that one might actually put on the player in a romantic situation. The Turangalîla-Symphonie was premiered in Boston by Leonard Bernstein, and plenty of conductors have followed his rather broad lead, but there's such a profusion of details that a cleaner, more neutral approach can also yield insights. That's what the listener gets here from the little-known Nationaltheater-Orchestra Mannheim -- apparently making its recording debut with this ambitious work -- and conductor Alexander Soddy. Listen to the last movement, "Final," with its layers upon layers in a high-energy dance for a sterling demonstration of the virtues of his approach. The ondes martenot part, played by Thomas Bloch, has an appropriately haunting quality, and Soddy is backed to the hilt by the crack Oehms engineering staff, working in the Rosengarten Mannheim Mozartsaal. This is a recording that will fascinate those with audiophile equipment, and indeed, will interest anyone whose attention has ever been caught by the Turangalîla-Symphonie.
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