Concert à quatre
Concert à quatre (Concerto for four) is the final work of the French composer Olivier Messiaen. It is a concerto written for four solo instruments (piano, cello, flute, oboe) and orchestra.
Composition
Messiaen first considered writing an oboe concerto for
In its final form (oboe, cello, piano, flute and orchestra), Concert à quatre was conceived in 1990 and begun in the summer of 1991. Messiaen worked on it steadily until December of that year. He originally intended the piece to have five movements, but at the beginning of 1992 his decline in health slowed the piece's progress and ultimately prevented him from completing it before his death.[1]
As it stands, the work is in four movements, in which Messiaen draws inspiration from
Of the completed movements, Messiaen's widow,
Messiaen had intended the fifth movement to be a fugue but as he had not even sketched it, it could not be completed and was thus left out of the final version.[2]
It was written for five musicians he felt particularly grateful to: the pianist
The score was published by Éditions Leduc in 2003.[3][4]
Music
The first movement (Entrée) is bipartite and juxtaposes several musical ideas: a theme inspired by Susanna's aria Venite inginocchiatevi in Act 2 of Mozart's
The second movement is an orchestral transcription of Messiaen's own Vocalise of 1935. This transcription was written first and was the impetus for the whole work.[5]
The third movement (Cadenza), as its title suggests, focuses almost exclusively on the four soloists. It features the
The final completed movement, titled Rondeau, is the longest and most complex. An energetic refrain is followed by a verse which features a wide range of birds including the bellbird, the
Premiere
Concert à Quatre was premiered by the dedicatees with the orchestra of the Opéra Bastille in Paris on 26 September 1994. The same forces recorded the work for CD the following day.[6]
References
- ^ ISBN 9780754606338.
- ^ a b c d e Halbreich, Harry (1995), Concert à quatre (Deutsche Grammophon), French liner notes.
- ^ Concert à Quatre. Editions Alphonse Leduc. 2003.
- ^ List of works by Olivier Messiaen, http://www11.ocn.ne.jp/~messiaen/work_list.html Archived 2011-08-04 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ a b c d Griffiths, Paul (1995), Concert à quatre (Deutsche Grammophon), English liner notes.
- ^ Gramophone magazine, January 1995.