Lunedì, 17 Novembre

h.21 Auditorium San Fedele

BIRDS
Spettacolo multimediale

Musiche di:
J.P. Rameau, R. Schumann e O. Messiaen
Víkingur Ólafsson (pianoforte)
Yann Malka (animazione)

Con il patrocinio del consolato d’Islanda e dell’ Institut Français di Milano In collaborazione con Instituto Cervantes di Milano e Fondazione Amadeus Evento inserito nel palinsesto Milano Cuore d’Europa

PROGRAMMA

Jean-Philippe RAMEAU (1683-1764)
– Le Rappel des oiseaux (1724)

Olivier MESSIAEN (1908-1992)
Catalogue d’oiseaux (1956/58)
– Le Loriot (Rigogolo)
– Le Traquet Stapazin (Monachella)
– L’Alouette-lulu (Tottavilla – Lullula Arborea)
– L’Alouette Calandrelle (Calandrella)
– La Bouscarle (Cettia Cetti / Usignolo di fiume)
– Le Courlis cendre (Numenius)

Robert SCHUMANN (1810-1856)
Vogel als Prophet (da Waldszenen) op. 82 (1848/49)

NOTES
The third event of the Multimedia Project focuses on the sonic world of birds, beginning with a major piano work by Olivier Messiaen: Catalogue d’oiseaux (1954–1956). Messiaen’s musical language reconstructs and transfigures birdsong with great delicacy and humour; at times realism prevails, at others a lyrical or symbolic‑spiritual dimension.

The evening will open with Le rappel des oiseaux by J.-P. Rameau, a sort of initial gathering of birds. At the centre of the programme are six pieces from Messiaen’s Catalogue. The concert will conclude with Vogel als Prophet (The Prophet Bird) by R. Schumann. It is therefore a journey that moves from the natural reality of birds—reinterpreted and sonified by Messiaen—to the visionary and prophetic dimension of Schumann.

An example of Messiaen’s programmatic text for each bird in the Catalogue:
GOLDEN ORIOLE
Late June, Charente, around 5:30 in the morning – Orgeval around 6 – Les Maremberts, under the bright midday sun. The golden oriole, the beautiful golden‑yellow bird with black wings, whistles from the oaks. Its song, flowing and golden, like the laughter of a foreign prince, evokes Africa and Asia, or some unknown planet filled with light and rainbows, full of Leonardo‑da‑Vinci‑like smiles. In gardens and woods, other birds: the quick, decisive strophe of the wren; the trusting caress of the robin; the liveliness of the blackbird; the tone of the redstart; the enchanting repetitions of the partridge. For a long time, tirelessly, the Sylvia of the gardens pour out their sweet virtuosity. The swift phylloscopus adds its skipping droplets of water. Indifferent call, golden and rainbow‑like memory: the sun seems to be the golden emanation of the oriole’s song.

BIOGRAPHIES
Víkingur Ólafsson
Possessing a rare combination of passionate musicality, explosive virtuosity and intellectual curiosity, Víkingur is an artist constantly seeking new ways to engage with his audience. Passionate about music from the Renaissance to today, he has performed more than twenty piano concertos and collaborated with conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Ilan Volkov and Pietari Inkinen, and with orchestras including the Turku Philharmonic, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Juilliard Orchestra and Iceland Symphony Orchestra.

He has appeared at numerous music festivals, including Busoni (Bolzano), MITO (Milan), Nordic Cool (Washington DC), Vinterfest (Sweden) and Stavanger (Norway). In recent years he has built particularly fruitful artistic and public relationships, establishing himself as a charismatic performer of great artistic integrity.

Alongside his many concerts, Víkingur pursues several innovative musical projects, including a ten‑episode television series that brought together artists and scholars from various fields, with the aim of creating a new audience for music through lively presentations, interviews and demonstrations at the instrument.

Víkingur is also the founder and artistic director of Reykjavík Midsummer Music, held annually during the summer solstice at the Reykjavík Harpa Concert House.

The musical part of the evening will be performed by the Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson. An audiovisual format will be explored in which Messiaen’s musical pieces are extended by a kind of visual resonance created by the Spanish video artist Yann Malka, a well‑known figure in the advertising world.

STAGING
A simple scenic device is proposed, combining recital and projection in a unified, fixed and coherent “sculptural” form, with a vertical panel placed in front of the piano’s soundboard, almost continuing its geometric shape and sound. The aim is to find a balance between two fundamental elements of Messiaen’s language: the “decorative” and the “pathetic”.

As Yann Malka observed while conceiving the staging of BIRDS, Messiaen’s musical art is more interested in the “quantitative” element—and above all in intensity—than in the qualitative one. In this regard, the French composer often refers to the image of medieval church stained‑glass windows, of which he was a great admirer. These windows are “decorative”, yet they produce a dazzling effect due to the intensity within them. This dazzling quality gives them an essential, not accessory, character: thus one moves from a “decorative” level to a “revelation”.

Similarly, in Messiaen’s music a “Presence” emerges—Malka notes—which constitutes the strongest element of his art. This characteristic, the act of juxtaposing rather than composing, ensures that there is always a Presence in his music, and that this Presence is indeed sacred in nature. The intensity of each event reaches its peak because each musical moment contains a revelation. For this reason, Malka chose to maintain spatial coherence in the staging, in order to create a single, solid “Presence”.

But Messiaen’s art also contains a “pathetic” element. For example, in the Catalogue des oiseaux the composer systematically plays with a conceptual and “pathetic” contrast. To give the birdsongs the character of an event, he always inserts a “setting”. With a variant of his language of juxtaposition, he creates a true “environment”, often harmonic (or “coloured”), which does not move but changes as the afternoon light changes. Thus we witness prodigious evocations of sunset and dawn, of thermal sensations, of scent, and so on. All this creates the “landscape” in which the bird’s song takes place. And the entire environment is highlighted and differentiated by the protagonist bird.

O. MESSIAEN — CATALOGUE D’OISEAUX
Composed between 1956 and 1958, the Catalogue d’oiseaux was a gigantic musical undertaking: the complete cycle of thirteen pieces lasts about three hours. For BIRDS, six of the most representative pieces were selected. Messiaen specifies that these are “bird songs from the provinces of France. Each soloist (bird) is presented in its habitat, surrounded by its landscape and by the songs of other birds present in the same region.” These pages reflect Messiaen’s travels and ornithological studies, his meticulous research and notation of birdsong in their natural environment.

The French composer classifies birdsong into three categories: calls (“often laborious and always surprising in rhythm and timbre”); strophes of variable length; and cadences and solos of the great “singers”, who occupy the most important part of the work. With few exceptions, all these songs are strictly authentic, though transcribed on a human scale in terms of intervals, density and duration. The duo or tutti combinations and the surrounding landscapes are also authentic.

Across the thirteen pieces, 77 different birds appear; notably, the bird that gives each piece its name does not always have the longest solo part. The musical material, beyond the birdsong, includes everything needed to evoke the landscape, through “coloured” musical modes and Messiaen’s characteristic compositional devices. Formally, there are no fixed points but ever‑changing itineraries: the composer follows, step by step, minute by minute, the living progression of the hours of day and night. One may say that it is more a revelatory journey, a series of apparitions, than a set of formally predetermined pieces.

An important note for listening: in the concert hall, the continuous sonic environment that surrounds birds in nature is absent.

(from “Olivier Messiaen”, by Harry Halbreich)