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Thursday, 11 June 2009
 Tickets will be available next week for
Sarah Rothenberg and Marilyn Nonken's 24 June performance of Olivier Messiaen's majestic 1943 work for two
pianos, Visions de l'Amen, at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 West
37th Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues. On the origin and structure
of the nearly one-hour piece, Paul Griffiths writes:
Released from prisoner-of-war camp in 1941,
Messiaen was slow to get going again as a composer in occupied Paris. The
stimulus he needed came from Yvonne Loriod, who arrived as one of his
students and was to become his second wife; almost at once, he wrote
Visions de l'Amen (1943) for the two of them to play. Her part,
according to his note in the published music, has "the rhythmic
difficulties, the bunches of chords, everything concerned with speed,
allure, and quality of sound"; while to himself, at the second piano, he
allotted "the principal melody, the thematic elements, everything
demanding emotion and power." The two pianos together become a percussion
orchestra, akin to the gamelans of Indonesia, to which the music seems to
look also in its frequent moments of pentatonic character. Its principal
key, A major, was for Messiaen the tonality of luminous blue, of the sky,
of Paradise.
The performance is free, but reservations must be made beginning 17
June at Ticket Central. More information at the Baryshnikov Arts Center Web page for the event.
More information about Visions de l'Amen is in Paul Griffiths'
notes on the piece. If you miss it (and you shouldn't),
despair not; Sarah and Marilyn have recorded the work for release on Bridge Records
later this year.
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Superfluities
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George Hunka
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Theory and polemic
95 Sentences About Theatre (2007)
Organum I (2006-2007)
Organum
II (2008-2009)
Critique of
Tragedy (2010-continuing)
Notes
Howard Barker
1
Howard
Barker 2
Samuel
Beckett 1
Samuel
Beckett 2
Bertolt
Brecht
Richard
Foreman 1
Richard
Foreman 2
Je Suis
Sang
Sarah
Kane
Music
Marilyn
Nonken
Saint Oedipus
Contact
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Copyright © 2003-2010
by George
Hunka
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