I would have gone to hear Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Timeno matter what else was on the program. But by putting it together with other French twentieth-century pieces by Darius Milhaud, Pierre Boulez, and Maurice Ravel, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center made my experience of the Messiaen even stronger and more affecting — or, if that is not possible, they at any rate gave me a greater appreciation than ever of Messiaen’s particular genius.
The three short pieces that filled the first half of the October 3rd program at the New York Ethical Culture Society were, each in its own way, entertainments. One could see the composers playing with musical forms: Milhaud, in his 1923 piano quintet suite from The Creation of the World, was playing with jazz; Boulez, in his 1984 Derive I for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and vibraphone, was playing with cacophony; and Ravel, in his 1924 Tzigane, was playing with gypsy-violin virtuosity. All this (with the possible exception of the Boulez) was extremely pleasurable to hear and to watch, especially in the hands of the masterful Chamber Music Society musicians. But I never lost myself in the music: I was conscious, throughout, of my exact degree of appreciation for the skill involved on the part of composers and players, and I was also conscious of myself, sitting among audience members at a New York concert. It was, in other words, the standard “good concert” experience.
All of this melted away in the face of the program’s second half, which was entirely taken up by the Quartet for the End of Time. Part of this has to do with sheer length: at nearly fifty minutes, Messiaen’s beautifully austere piece requires a different kind of concentration from us, almost a different mode of listening. The austerity is not always severe — there is birdsong here, and unexpected melodiousness to counter the harshness, and surprising transitions between near-silence and ear-threatening loudness; plenty to keep the attention riveted. And part of it, of course, has to do with the story behind the music: written for fellow musicians in a Polish prisoner-of-war camp during the Second World War, rehearsed and performed under the supervision of a strangely tolerant camp commander, with a first audience that consisted entirely of other camp prisoners, the Quartet for the End of Time has a special, intimate connection with the horrors of the twentieth century. But this connection would mean nothing if the music did not bear it out — and in Friday night’s performance the music soared.
It was fascinating, in a way, to watch the very musicians who had done the fun, visibly virtuosic work of the first half turn themselves into mere (though that is hardly the right word) transmitters of Messiaen’s creation. Paul Watkins and David Shifrin, who had been skillful in the Boulez, became vehicles of pure feeling here; I don’t know which was more powerful, the painfully expressive music that Watkins pulled out of his cello in his solo moments, or the uncanny way Shifrin seemed to bring his clarinet sound from an almost inaudible distance into the very room where we sat. But perhaps the most transfixing moments of the piece occurred toward the end, where Daniel Hope performed the searing violin part against Gilbert Kalish’s self-effacing but perfect piano accompaniment. Hope, who used to be the violinist in the now-disbanded Beaux Arts Trio (and who has said, of his years with Menahem Pressler, that they turned him from a good violinist into a good musician), had performed with delightful, nearly acrobatic skill in the Ravel Tzigane, showing us all his fast-finger abilities at once. It was hard to believe that this man who had “showed off” so successfully in the Ravel was the same musician who now seemed to disappear into the Messiaen music. In the especially quiet passages, he almost seemed to close in on himself, as if he too were straining to hear the notes; throughout, he managed to convey the impression that the violin was playing itself, while he was merely its Bunraku-like human attendant. And yet the skill required to carry off this final, marvelous piece of music was more than anything he had demonstrated before. This, among other things, was what the program succeeded in showing us: that in the greatest music, pleasurable virtuosity drops away to reveal something even richer and more moving—something that looks like simplicity, but is not.
—October 5, 2008