From first being wowed by Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie aged eleven, to commissioning now 96-year-old Betsy Jolas, Sir Simon Rattle discusses the awe-inspiring music that will feature in his final concerts at the Barbican as LSO Music Director this June.
‘Somebody asked me, ‘how come you have chosen Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie as your last Barbican concerts as Music Director of the LSO?’ And I would actually have to say very honestly, although it’s a piece which I’d long thought I must do with the London Symphony Orchestra, partly it was because our Managing Director, Kathryn McDowell, who loves this piece so much. I thought, ‘how could I refuse?’.
‘This piece, Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie, has been enormously important to me through my life. One of the very early performances, maybe the first complete performance in Great Britain, was played by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Sir Charles Groves. I was about eleven years old and I thought it was one of the most exciting and thrilling things I had ever heard. I nearly jumped out of my seat with excitement and I thought, ‘This is a piece that I want to get to know.’
I still have my score from then, from the sixties, that I bought very, very early. When I was in London, I heard this very famous performance that André Previn did with the London Symphony Orchestra. He then went on to make a famous recording. It’s something we played a lot in Birmingham because we found it’s a kind of cult piece, that if people get into this, they get into it in a most extraordinary way.
It is a shout of joy, relief and ecstasy for the end of World War II. Messiaen was in a prison camp for a lot of World War II – not knowing whether he would survive, he wrote the astonishing Quartet For the End of Time for himself and the other three musicians who were there.
But you feel with Turangalîla that this is a song of love. Messiaen was always longing for life. It is generous, it is ridiculous. It’s ten movements! Some of it is so far over the top, you can hardly imagine what you are hearing.
Messiaen loved jazz and big band music, and so you hear the fact that he was listening to these screaming brass sections in jazz. But he was also fascinated by Indian music. I’d always wished my French was better, so I could have spoken to him more when we met, but you felt that he was willing to embody the whole Earth. It’s an experience to be part of and play a piece of such variety, energy and ecstasy. There’s very, very little like it.’
The piece also shows Messiaen’s condition where when he hears a chord, he hears specific colours. So if you change a note in a chord, it will become a little more purple or a little more blue for him. In that way, synesthesia must be a complete blessing. His whole world must have been like living in a stained glass window.
I have a funny story that André Previn told me – a lot of André’s stories were true, if not quite all of them but I’m sure this was. He played Turangalîla with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Messiaen was there. At the end of the dress rehearsal, he went to talk to Messiaen and the orchestra asked, ‘Well, what did the composer say?’ He said, ‘I don’t think you want to know what he said.’ ‘But we really want to know what he said.’ He said, ‘Well, the truth is, he just said, ‘Could the brass section be a little bit more orange?”
And so this must be how he heard music and saw it. I did an interview in my twenties and I said in an unthinking moment that it’s like a huge great musical Mars Bar. But in fact, it has much more variety than a Mars Bar, but probably even more calories.’
‘She’s lived through everything. She is funny and wise and imaginative and slightly off the wall.’
‘Betsy Jolas is one of the most extraordinary living composers. Like many other people, I found out about her music much too late, but fortunately she survives everything. When I asked her to write a piece for the end of the season, she said, ‘Why not? I’ll only be 96.’ It’s so interesting because of course she grew up with Messiaen. She knew all these people. She founded the big Domaine music series to play new music with Pierre Boulez after World War II.
She’s lived through everything. She is funny and wise and imaginative and slightly off the wall, and so is her music. It has all those things. And as a composer in her nineties, there’s so much colour in her music, but not one more note than necessary. It has been such a joy discovering both her and her music.
When she’s around, I find people in the orchestra gather around her to ask about, for example, when she sung Verdi’s Requiem conducted by Toscanini, or to ask ‘What was De Chirico like?’ It’s as though the entire 20th century has gone through her. She said to me at dinner after one concert, when she was talking about a piece, ‘Simon, do forgive me. I’m such a pre-war girl.’ She is really a joy, a great musician, and it will be so good to have her music sitting there with Messiaen. How extraordinary that they are really of the same time, but thank you, God, she’s still with us.’
