AB: Composer-in-Residence Esa-Pekka Salonen leads one of the best-loved scores by Olivier Messiaen: the Turangalila-Symphony.

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1 Script for NYP 16-33: Turangalila (INSERT NATIONAL UNDERWRITING CREDIT #1) (THEME MUSIC UP AND UNDER TO "X") AB: And this week...(x) (MUSIC) AB: Composer-in-Residence Esa-Pekka Salonen leads one of the best-loved scores by Olivier Messiaen: the Turangalila-Symphony. This is Alec Baldwin. Thanks very much for joining us as the orchestra presents this work for only the third time in its history. Pianist Yuja Wang and Ondes-Martenot Valérie Hartmann-Claverie will be our soloists in a work the composer called a song of love and a hymn to joy. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts The New York Philharmonic This Week. (BILLBOARD OUT, AMBIENCE UP AND UNDER) (Actuality: (01-alan_01)

2 AB: Music Director Alan Gilbert with a few opening remarks about the music of Messiaen. Mr. Gilbert went on to praise Esa-Pekka Salonen as one of the foremost interpreters of the piece we hear on this broadcast: the Turangalila- Symphony. (ACTUALITY: 02-alan) AB: Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen was born December 10, 1908 in Avignon, France. For those of you keeping score, that s one day before Elliott Carter another giant of contemporary music was born right here, in Manhattan. Messiaen left this world on April 27, 1992 at the age of 83. (Elliott Carter would outlive him by 20 years, passing just one month shy of his 104th birthday.) Actually, if it hasn t already been done by some ambitious musicology student, one could probably right a very good paper comparing and contrasting the development of these two men. We re not going to do that right now, but one might argue that both they and their music had more in common than one might initially realize

3 Messiaen grew up in a very literary family: his father was an English teacher and translated several of Shakespeare s plays into French and his mother was a poet. A precocious child, Messiaen was self-taught as a pianist before beginning formal music studies and he entered the famed Paris Conservetoire at age 11. His teachers there included Paul Dukas for harmony (perhaps best known in this country for The Sorcerer s Apprentice, though he also wrote a very charming Symphony) and Marcel Dupré for organ one of the greatest exponents of that instrument of all time. (Messiaen was no slouch himself and was installed as the organist at La Trinité at just 22 years of age.)

4 Messiaen also began his first forays into composition while still very young. Early influences included Ravel and Debussy and perhaps due to his parents love of words, he became attracted to opera. While still a child, he even started a collection of opera scores and would ask for additions to it for birthdays and holidays. The composer recalled that getting a copy of Debussy s opera, Pelleas and Melisande was one of the most defining moments in his life. Messiaen never strayed too far from the Paris Conservatory. He left as a student in 1930 and returned as a teacher in 1941, where he remained until his retirement in Notable amongst his pupils were Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Quincey Jones, and his wife, Yvonne Loriod, who for many years was the only person that played Turangalila often with her sister, Jeanne on the Ondes Martenot. More on that in just a bit

5 AB: Messiaen is one of the most original voices in all of music. He certainly doesn t fit into the mold of his contemporaries, but neither is he in any way a pastiche of his French predecessors. Mr. Salonen summed him up this way: (CLIP) [tell anecdote about raiding his apartment?] AB: So now we get to the music at hand: The Turangalîla Symphony was commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the mid-1940's As the story goes, Koussevitzy told Messiaen quote, 'Write me the work you want to, in the style you want, as long as you want, with the instrumental formation you want In other words, he basically gave the composer carte blanche. This that was an attractive enough offer to persuade Messiaen to accept one of his first commissions as a composer. It was Leonard Bernstein who led the Boston Symphony in the work s premiere in December, 1949 with the composer s wife, Yvonne Loriod as piano soloist.

6 Despite the Bernstein connection, Turangalila didn t turn up at the Philharmonic until it was mounted for the composer s 80th birthday in Esa-Pekka Salonen was there: (ACTUALITY: EPS) Turangalila has only been given one other time in 2000, when Hans Vonk conducted it as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. Turangalîla is a Sanskrit word. In program notes prepared for the premiere of the work, the composer wrote the following about the title to his symphony: quote Like all words belonging to ancient Eastern languages, [Turangalîla] is very rich in meaning. Lola literally means play, but play in the sense of divine action on the cosmos...the play of creation, of destruction and reconstruction, the play of life and death. Lîla is also Love. Turanga is Time the time which runs like a galloping horse...time which slips like sand through the hourglass. Turanga is also movement and rhythm. Turangalîla, then, signifies at one and the same time, a love song, a hymn to joy, time, movement, rhythm, life, and death.

7 The Turangalîla Symphony calls for an enormous orchestra and a most unusual array of instruments; in addition to augmented, traditional forces, the score also calls for Basque drums, a Chinese cymbal, celesta, glockenspiel, temple blocks, and tam-tam. The work also calls for two soloists: piano and Ondes Martenot. Of the piano part, Messiaen wrote, quote The piano part is of such importance and its execution demands such extraordinary virtuosity that one might say the Turangalîla Symphony is almost a concerto for piano and orchestra. Long and brilliant cadenzas in the different movements draw together the elements of development and form part of the overall design

8 As mentioned, Messiaen also included a solo part for the Ondes Martenot an early monophonic electronic instrument invented in Paris around Sometimes called the ondes musicales, it is one of the most successful electronic musical instruments developed before the synthesizer. The 7 octave range of the instrument and its unique texture appealed to the experimental nature of many composers in the 20th century, including Edgar Varese, Darius Milhaud and Artur Honegger. In his opera based on St. Francis of Assisi, Messiaen wrote parts for THREE Ondes-Martenot. The Turangalîla symphony has four cyclical themes or motifs that recur, in one way or another, throughout the ten-movement score. These can be roughly divided as the statue theme, the flower theme, the theme of love, and a chord progression: [EXAMPLE] Two of these themes are introduced in the symphony s opening movement, titled, Introduction. The statue theme is in thirds and is carried primarily by the trombones:

9 AB: This eventually gives way to the clarinets for the much gentler, flower theme. AB: The second movement is marked, Chant d amour or song of love. As with the statue theme, you ll hear this love theme many times throughout the piece; here, you ll notice it in the other-worldy voice of the Ondes Martenot: AB: From here, we have Turangalîla 1 and a second Song of love before coming to the fifth movement, which is labeled, Joy of the Stars Blood Joy is very apt description of what we hear at the start of the movement: later our old pal the statue theme returns, and you ll hear it both in the piano part and in the orchestra in this next excerpt:

10 Next, we hear the Garden of Love s Sleep and Turangalîla 2 the shortest and arguable most dramatic movement in the score. Here s just a taste: AB: In Development of Love, we again encounter the love theme in all its glory, framed by the chord theme and the statue theme at the introduction and coda. Here s a small section towards the end of the movement where several things are happening at once: We then move on through Turangalîla 3, and on to the Finale, which ends in a quite ecstatic manner, largely centered on development around the love theme:

11 We leave off the pre-concert portion of this broadcast with a few more words of the composer. The English translation is from Jeff Nichol s and Josiah Fisk s incredible volume, Composers On Music: ` Freedom is a necessity for artists. By choosing its future, freedom creates a new past and that is what builds us up. It is that, too, which determines the style of the artist, his characters...his signature... All the same, one has to understand the word, freedom in its widest sense. The freedom about which I am speaking has nothing to do with fantasy, disorder, revolt, or indifference. It is a constructive freedom, which is arrived at through self-control, respect for others, a sense of wonder of that which is created, meditation on the mystery, and the search for Truth. This wonderful freedom is like a foretaste of the freedom of Heaven

12 Let s pause right here for station identification. When we return, we ll hear the Turangalila-Symphony played without interruption. I m Alec Baldwin and you re listening to The New York Philharmonic This Week (ID) AB: and with our artists on stage, we ll now hear the Turangalila-Syphony by Olivier Messiaen. Yuja Wang and Valerie-Hartman Clavarie are the soloists and Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts The New York Philharmonic. (MUSIC) (THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE) AB: We just heard Olivier Messiaen s hymn to love, the Turangalila-Symphony. The New York Philharmonic was conducted by its Composer-in- Residence, Esa-Pekka Salonen. As soloists, we heard Yuja Wang, piano and Valerie-Hartmann Claverie, Ondes-Martenot. (INSERT CREDITS AND CLOSERS)