‘Each of us must go some day to meet the Lord, and all life long we yearn for that encounter to be a joyful one.’ The words of Yvonne Loriod, widow of Olivier Messiaen, written to me after the death of my father: they seem so poignant following her own death on May 17, 2010. During her lifetime, Loriod undoubtedly found joy in Messiaen’s special and vital music. For the majority of her 86 years, her raison d’être was in being by his side, as a wife and interpreter – both of them together in an extraordinary creative partnership. So it is tempting to view Mme Messiaen through the lens of her husband’s life – indeed, most of the press obituaries have said perhaps too much about him and not enough about her. Yet, in my meetings with Loriod, I found the woman behind the man to be utterly fascinating in her own right, as a teacher, as a pianist, and as a person.
I got to know Yvonne Loriod during my mid-twenties while preparing repertoire for the Messiaen 2002 International Conference in Sheffield. She was already an inspiration to me – I was familiar with her commanding and authoritative concert and recorded interpretations of Messiaen’s music. Yet the thought of lessons with her was rather daunting, my main concern being not to cause any displeasure to this most formidably gifted and important lady in her own home.
It was here, at the Messiaen apartment in the heart of Montmartre, that I visited Yvonne Loriod on a number of occasions and got an unforgettable glimpse into her world. This place had been Mme Loriod’s home since before she married. She told me the story of how they had colonized successive adjacent apartments as they became free. With walls knocked through, all spaces soundproofed, the result was a sizeable unit of compact rooms spread over three floors.
Loriod’s beautiful manner and personal charm set me at ease straight away. I had made the faux pas of bringing to a diabetic the gift of syruped fruit – but she would get enjoyment, she reassured me, all the more by being able to offer these delicacies to visitors. This altruism was borne out by her offer to me of Coca-Cola. ‘I get it in specially for my young visitors,’ she said.
Lessons with Loriod were thrilling, particularly for the way they started. She would ask ‘Will you play with music?’, at the same time removing the score from my hand. It was a question loaded with more- than-ordinary significance, I knew, since Loriod’s own memory was legendary: it had allowed her to learn Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto in just eight days for the first French performance with the Orchestre National under Manuel Rosenthal. As I played to her, Loriod was always hugely attentive, always encouraging. She would enthuse verbally during a performance if she was enjoying it, praising me and sometimes asking me to repeat a passage. Her connexion to the music itself – even though she was not playing it – was always manifestly obvious. (At one of Peter Hill’s recitals at which Loriod was present I observed her fingers moving constantly.)
One of the most memorable features of my lessons with Loriod was the sound she produced when she played for me. Demonstrations were (sadly) few and far between – lessons were more about drawing out of me the best I could offer. But on occasion she would move me from the piano and fill the apartment with that instantly recognisable, incisive sound of hers. As she went she would explain how she was achieving the required tone. One method revolved around ‘picking out’ specific notes within the texture. In Messiaen, she explained, every chord has a ‘focus’. And every chord progression has a melody. Sometimes, it is at the top of the texture; sometimes, it is in the middle. But it must always be audible; it can never be too present. As an example, over and over again she asked me to give more sound to the top notes of the progression that opens the Petites esquisses d’oiseaux.
Another way Loriod achieved such a warm, resonant sound, was by her liberal use of the pedal. She talked a lot about speed of pedaling, or, more accurately, the speed of change in the pedal. In particular, she was always concerned that the rate of pedal change complemented the tempo. In the passage mentioned above, she wanted the chords joined by legatissimo pedal, specifically requiring me to wait (what seemed to me) a very long time after each chord. She offered the same advice with the chords of ‘the rose-coloured lake at dawn’ in La Fauvette des jardins, and in many similar instances she would repeatedly say ‘change after’, ‘change later’. This way, I noticed, the changes in harmony become almost imperceptible. On the other hand, Mme Loriod was very clear that elsewhere, particularly before rests, the pedal be cleared quickly.
A major characteristic of Loriod’s playing was its physicality, something that she would try to explicate if necessary. She would frequently demonstrate the touch she wanted on my hand, coaxing out more suppleness for the ‘Regard de l’esprit de joie’ (No. 10 from Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus), or a precise attack for the Song Thrush in the Petites esquisses. Sometimes, gesture was as much about the visual as the practical: both arms should be lifted to the same height in bar 10 of La Fauvette des jardins – ‘to look like the mountains’, she said. On occasion, she encouraged me to ‘draw’ with my hands, to imagine myself as a painter and the piano a canvas, the scene at once repres- ented in the music and on the instrument.
Loriod frequently impressed upon me the importance of respect for the written score. She reminded me many times that Messiaen’s rhythmic values are exact, absolute. She was extremely sensitive to even slight transgressions, for instance drawing attention to unwarranted rests of four demisemiquavers as opposed to five demisemiquavers. This scrupulosity tended to result in requiring me to count – in French, out loud – from one to five at a tempo of demisemiquaver equals 240; it was lesson well learned, I feel.
On not a few occasions, Mme Loriod took a liberal attitude with Messiaen’s text. She would, for instance, insert pedal breaks in a multitude of places where Messiaen himself had not marked them. A striking example of this is in ‘Le Merle noir’ from the Petites esquisses, where she asserted that the chord in bar 4 (and corresponding places) was not to be linked to the previous chord sequence; in this case, the pedaling was to be broken abruptly. Moreover, even though in the same piece Messiaen clearly dictates that the pedal resonance ring on from bar 5 into bar 6, Mme Loriod insisted there needed to be a break. In every such case, I have come to understand there is a structural concern, best appreciated in the context of performance. A similar challenge to the printed score was with the tempo of ‘Par Lui tout a été fait’, the phenomenally challenging fugue from Vingt Regards; here, the piece can be faster than indicated – ‘It is easier nowadays than it was then,’ Loriod pointed out.
Nowhere was Loriod’s technical mastery more evident to me in our lessons than in the area of keyboard fingering. It is hardly surprising that this aspect of piano technique – so much a challenge with Messiaen – should have been given the most attention. There were definite ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ – no thumbs on black notes, for example. In ‘Première communion de la Vierge’ (No. 10 from Vingt Regards) there were some ingenious borrowings between the hands. Overall, the sheer creativity of Mme Loriod’s ‘solutions’ to the physical challenges of Messiaen’s music was fascinating.
Loriod had the gift of bringing the piano to life, and whenever I met her I came away more inspired and more in love with Messiaen’s music. My personal sadness on her death was balanced by an intense gratitude for having had the opportunity to meet her, to play for her, and to enjoy her guidance at the instrument. The warmth and good humour that characterised being in her company will always stay with me. At the end of the lessons, as I left the Messiaen apartment, she would say, not ‘Au revoir’ or ‘Bonne chance’, but ‘Courage!’ It was, I felt, a reflection of her joyful attitude to life, which stemmed from the complete security she had in her Catholic faith.
Yvonne Loriod’s sublime technique was summed up by Messiaen: ‘to her anything is possible’. I learned that her technical aptitude for her husband’s music merely underlined her spiritual and emotional oneness with it. The double entendre of Loriod’s name – Le Loriot is French for ‘Golden Oriole’ – was a serendipity in which Messiaen delighted. When I was preparing La Fauvette des jardins with her, Mme Loriod explained to me that the arrival of the Oriole two-thirds of the way through is ‘an event’ – its song is so beautiful that ‘all the other birds stop to listen’. She told me the story of how the Golden Oriole would come to the Messiaens’ garden at their summer-house in Petichet and eat all the cherries – and then she promptly produced some cherries she had bought in to feed me specifically at this point in my performance. It was all part of giving character to the moment, to the playing. And so she told me to give Messiaen’s birds a vivid, dramatic character – the Robin was ‘amiable, kind, tender, charming’, the Nightingale was ‘joyous, triumphant’, the Great Reed Warbler was ‘angry, not nice’.
I once asked Mme Loriod how she got by missing Messiaen. She replied that her life continued to be enriched by him. After retirement from the concert platform, she spent her time faithfully bringing to fruition Messiaen’s enormous Traité de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie. And, she told me, she played Mozart every day.
Yvonne Loriod is buried with her husband in the cemetery of Saint Théoffrey, the grave marked by a headstone in the shape of a bird that she herself designed. It reads, ‘Tous les oiseaux des étoiles’ – ‘All the birds of the stars’. The passage, from Messiaen’s song cycle Harawi, continues: ‘Loin du tableau mes mains chantent’ – ‘Far from the painting my hands are singing’.
Muso magazine – August / September 2010 issue
Yvonne Loriod is synonymous with the music of Olivier Messiaen, but her legacy is an inspiration in its own terms, writes former pupil and pianist Matthew Schellhorn
With the death of Yvonne Loriod on 17 May this year, the musical world lost not only a great pianist and teacher but also the catalyst behind some of the 20th century’s most extraordinary music. For some 50 years she was personally linked to Olivier Messiaen, first as his pupil, then as his muse and dedicatee, then as his wife and pre-eminent interpreter.
She was also, to me and to many others, an inspiration. I first met Yvonne Loriod in 1994, two years after Messiaen’s death, when I was a pupil at Chetham’s School of Music. My music teacher had arranged for me to visit her in her dressing room at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall, where she was giving a performance of Réveil des oiseaux that evening. I was already in love with Messiaen’s music, and was preparing to perform Visions de l’Amen – the first work written by Messiaen for Loriod, and which she and the composer premiered in 1943. It made a huge impression on me to meet the very person for whom the piece was written. Seeing Loriod perform in concert – on this occasion in partnership with her sister, Jeanne, on ondes Martenot – was also a wonderful spectacle: the two venerable ladies, dressed in matching multicoloured voluminous dresses, captivated the audience with irresistible flair and panache.
Loriod’s playing was, in a word, extraordinary. A child prodigy, who had learned the whole of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas by the age of 14, her pianism was so mature and powerful by the time Messiaen met her in 1941 that it gave him a blank canvas. He is quoted as saying: ‘I could allow myself the greatest eccentricities because to her anything is possible. I knew I could invent very difficult, very extraordinary, and very new things: they would be played, and played well.’ While Messiaen’s early piano style had been rooted in organ-like textures, now he gave free rein to his imagination. So followed a stream of pieces written specifically with Loriod’s remarkable gifts in mind. After Visions de l’Amen came Vingt regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus (‘Twenty gazes on the Christ-child’, 1944), and then the enormous Turangalîla-Symphonie (1946-48) – ‘like a piano concerto’, Messiaen described it.
Many other works for piano and orchestra followed, but of all the works written for Loriod it is the epic piano cycle Catalogue d’oiseaux (‘Bird Catalogue’, 1956-58) that encapsulates how her incisive playing provided Messiaen with the ‘voice’ his music most required. In her great 1970 recording of the Catalogue, the rhythmic precision and the voicing is belied by the seeming naturalness of the playing. Loriod can be seen in many pictures following the composer in the fields and woods with a tape recorder. Messiaen, of course, delighted in the double entendre of Loriod’s name: in French, Le Loriot is the Golden Oriole, a bird that in the Catalogue has a movement of its own. It was my privilege to prepare the other solo bird pieces, La Fauvette des jardins (‘The Garden Warbler’, 1970) and the Petites esquisses d’oiseaux (‘Small Bird Sketches’, 1985), with Loriod in my mid-twenties. I remember her gift for (vocal) mimicry, and the enthusiasm with which she would continually rush to the bookcase to get books on birds – all duly described in purely anthropomorphic terms, of course. Most of all, I remember the joy she experienced hearing her husband’s music – she always referred to him as Messiaen – music she herself knew so well, and which she must have played and heard hundreds of times.
Loriod was always inquisitive about the new music I was playing, and I was pleased to be able to tell her about the works I was premiering. Her championing of new music takes on a significance when one considers the lesser-known fact that she was a talented composer in her own right. She was modest about her unusual and intriguing musical works. Mostly premiered during the 1940s, they are characterised by their unusual combinations of instruments (Pièces africaines is scored for a bizarre ensemble of flute, oboe, ondes Martenot, guitar, bongos, timpani and two pianos, for example). It is perhaps this personal affinity with Messiaen’s vocation, combined with her other phenomenal skills, which gave this lady the edge in terms of her ability to communicate Messiaen’s music. Yvonne Loriod’s life and career testify to the fact that all new music needs passionate advocates, and all performers have a role to play in the creative process.
Muso magazine – December 2009/January 2010 issue
Ahead of his performance in the Cambridge Music Festival Haydn bicentenary celebrations, Matthew Schellhorn talks to Claire Jackson, Editor of Muso magazine, about a series of six miniatures that take unusual inspiration from the great composer.
From birthdays to death dates, 2009 saw myriad composer anniversaries commemorated; we marked 200 years after Mendelssohn's birth and 350 years post Purcell's arrival. We paid our sombre respects to Handel, 250 years after his passing and noted the 50 years gone by after the death of Martinu. While these are all worthy events, it can be difficult for the discerning artist or programmer to find an appropriate means of showcasing the legacy of the composers' repertoire without resorting to simply trotting out populist classics.
So, when pianist Matthew Schellhorn (above) began planning his recital at the Cambridge Music Festival in November, he vowed to mark the 200 years after Haydn's death with a fitting, creative and contemporary tribute. Schellhorn sought inspiration from a soggetto cavato project undertaken 100 years ago for the Haydn centenary, in which prominent composers of the day – Debussy, Ravel, Dukas, d'Indy, Hahn and Widor – each wrote a piece based on the letters H, A, Y, D, N translated into the musical notes B, A, D, D, G (where B = H in German, and with D and G supplying for otherwise unplayable letters). The pieces were later published in La Revue Musicale, for the Société Internationale de Musique. Schellhorn asked six British composers – Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Michael Zev Gordon, Cecilia McDowall, Colin Riley, Jeremy Thurlow, and Tim Watts – to write new works in a similar vein, this time freeing up the use of the letters, with some extraordinary results.
'A typical centenary would survey pieces by the composer himself,' explains Schellhorn. 'I became aware of the La Revue Musicale project and thought it seemed a neat and fun way of celebrating 200 years of Haydn.'
Watts, a close composer friend of Schellhorn's from their Cambridge University days was a clear choice when it came to commissioning; the other writers were picked due to their broad-ranging techniques and musical personalities. 'I wanted to get a nice spread of styles because it was obvious to me from the original set that each composer is very different,' says Schellhorn. 'I left the brief fairly open to ensure different responses. Originally the five notes were predetermined but I suggested either using these or having a completely different pattern of notes, if the composers could justify them. I was worried that they might all come back with the same piece and feared direct repetition, but they've all dealt with it differently. I did consider putting them all in touch with each other to prevent any crossover, but I decided that might be a bit synthetic.'
There is a strong sense of individuality within the final set; each piece has its own personality, from the pensive, meditative sustained notes of Riley's weave to the structural technique employed in Butterfly by Thurlow. Such clear characterisation might have made the work as a whole disjointed, but Schellhorn has given the order of appearance much consideration: 'The order they appear [in the magazine] is the order I performed them. I decided to start with Tim's piece, which imitates a clock whirring back to life. The set is a bit like a Haydn symphony, really, with a slow introduction and then a minuet in the middle, finishing with a virtuosic finale.'
The music was premiered at the 2009 Cambridge Music Festival in November, as part of a concert that also showcased works by Mendelssohn, marking the composer's aforementioned 200th birthday. While contemporary music often gets a hard rap from musicians and critics alike, Schellhorn is confident the Homage to Haydn project has broken boundaries in a way that audiences can engage with.
'This isn't gimmicky,' he says, firmly. 'Every piece was new at some point. Often we listen to music and accept it, simply because it's famous or by a composer we know. Virtually every great piece came with some controversy; it seems appropriate to celebrate Haydn, who was a groundbreaking composer, with pieces that are entirely new.
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Piano Professional – Summer 2008
MESSIAEN AND THE YOUNG PIANIST
Matthew Schellhorn considers how we can encourage young pianists to engage with Messiaen’s piano music
When, at the age of fifteen, I was requested by my piano teacher to start preparing a piece by a recently deceased French composer, little did I know that this musical encounter would spark the beginning of a lifelong passion! As I acquainted myself more with the music of Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) I was stunned by its vivid colour, its rhythmic power and its overwhelming sense of joy.
In this centenary year, Messiaen’s music is being performed with love by many who share my enthusiasm, but the piano repertoire continues to be considered the preserve of the professional artist. As teachers of music, how can we ensure that this inimitable composer is not overlooked? How can we encourage young pianists to engage with this most important figure of twentieth-century music?
It seems to me that the problems of approaching Messiaen’s music at a young age are the same as attempting to grasp any music, particularly the most recently composed, without being given any background explanation. Much twentieth-century music can be viewed as prohibitively complicated for the learner, but only if we cling to the traditional norms of our Western music tradition. Mostly, technical difficulties are only as serious as the unfamiliar terminology used to describe them. But in Messiaen’s ‘musical language’ scales are now ‘modes’, harmony is ‘colour’, and rhythm is ‘the ordering of movement’. To understand how our horizons can be opened, take this last category: Messiaen said that the classicists, in the Western sense of the term, ‘were bad rhythmicians, or rather, composers who knew nothing of rhythm’. This might seem surprising, as we teachers require of our pupils to play their Bach preludes ‘in time’ and their Haydn sonatas ‘with the beat’, but to Messiaen such works are by no means the apogee of rhythmic music: ‘In these works we hear an uninterrupted succession of equal durations that puts the listener in a state of beatific satisfaction; nothing interferes with his pulse, breathing or heartbeat. So he is very calm, receives no shock, and all this seems perfectly “rhythmic” to him. … The march … with its uninterrupted succession of absolutely equal note-values, is anti-natural.’
While it is difficult to imagine avoiding Bach when learning keyboard technique, it is intriguing to consider Messiaen’s point of view, and as a teenage pianist his anti-traditional notions about music theory fascinated me. Discovering rhythmic palindromes in music had a kind of Poirot-esque delight about it, and I began to appreciate how the evident building blocks of composing rely on a performer almost to obscure them. For although Messiaen’s ‘musical language’ is still, even now, somewhat outside our tradition, it repays close inspection, and it is remarkably transparent on the page. This is because Messiaen was an enthusiastic teacher himself: Messiaen said he could have ‘died from grief’ the day he left behind his teaching duties at the Paris Conservatoire. In particular, Messiaen’s scores abound with interpretative detail about tempo, nuance, rhythmic emphasis and dynamic: learn to read Messiaen well, and you are reading music well.
The piano is present in the majority of Messiaen’s works, and his concentration on the instrument is owed mainly to the ‘transcendent virtuosity and the absolutely amazing technical facility’ of Yvonne Loriod (Messiaen’s wife from 1961 until his death): ‘I was therefore able to allow myself the greatest eccentricities… . I knew I could invent very difficult, very extraordinary, and very new things: they would be played, and played well.’ Messiaen’s piano music is at times, then, highly virtuosic, and unsuitable for very young pianists. But for all its ‘eccentricities’, it sits well with other ‘standard’ repertoire, and judiciously chosen works can form part of any young pianist’s repertoire. Messiaen’s own favourites were Rameau, Scarlatti, Mozart (‘an extraordinary rhythmician’), Chopin (‘the greatest composer for the piano’), Debussy, Albéniz, Bartók, Prokofiev. The common factor here is colour, the importance of which in piano repertoire cannot, in my opinion, be over-emphasized. Messiaen said that he himself played the piano as though he were ‘conducting an orchestra, which is to say by turning the piano into a mock orchestra with a large palette of timbres and accents’. This is surely a good recommendation for anyone!
I can think readily of repertoire suggestions for the young pianist which are excellent introductions to Messiaen’s style and from which useful lessons about general pianism can be drawn. The obvious starting place in encountering Messiaen’s piano music at young age would be one of the Préludes (1928–29): ‘La Colombe’ and ‘Plainte calme’ are among the shortest and the most charming. The beauty for the learner about these pieces is the amount of repetition. Messiaen’s forms are easily explained and easily communicable.
‘Je dors, mais mon coeur veille’, No. 19 from Vingt regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus (1944), is another a prime (if somewhat more challenging) example of the accessibility of Messiaen’s piano style. This piece is certainly for the pianist with bigger hands. That said, the emphasis is again on subtlety of expression, and there is much here to be learned about phrasing and counting. Once again, repetition of material comes to the learner’s aid.
‘Premiere Communion de la Vierge’, No. 11 from Vingt regards is also very approachable. Even though one could at first be intimidated by the copious amount of hemidemisemiquavers (!) the figuration is surprisingly comfortable if a sensible fingering is chosen and stuck to. Moreover, the piece’s tranquil effect is only enhanced by a slower tempo – one can take Messiaen’s ‘rapide’ marking with a pinch of salt, if necessary – a testimony to how a judicious choice of a modest tempo (with flow) can assist in creating a beautiful sound-world. Here, repetition is tempered by charming modification: have fun explaining and counting in prime numbers towards the end…!
For the more ambitious young pianist, one of Messiaen’s pieces written in the ‘style-oiseau’ will undoubtedly fascinate. ‘Le Merle noir’ from Petites esquisses d’oiseaux (1985) is a good first choice, using a blackbird’s song to articulate a musical form. As familiarity with this style increases, pieces from the Catalogue d’oiseaux (1956–68) will only beckon….
For maximum entertainment value (to the teacher!), Messiaen wrote a wonderful sight-reading piece – Morceau de lecture à vue – in 1934 for his own students to try their hand at. One page long, in 6/8 throughout, this rarity can be found in the recently published Messiaen (Yale University Press) by Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone.
I myself came to Messiaen’s piano music blithely unaware of its compositional complexities. But I was fortunate to have teachers at an early age who had already instilled in me a sense of curiosity and respect for the unknown. Surely the most important lesson to teach a young musician is to cultivate an open mind.
CompositionToday – 26 May 2007
Matthew Schellhorn talks to David Bruce, composer and founder of new music website, CompositionToday, about his background, his interests, and his plans for the future.
Tell us something about your background.
Originally, I'm from Yorkshire, where I was born in 1977.
At thirteen, I went to study at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, where I learned with a wonderful piano teacher, David Hartigan; during that time I also took lessons with Ryszard Bakst and Maria Curcio. They were all extremely different teachers, yet the variety of approaches I experienced from a young age was so helpful, and still is. I'd say what my early teachers had in common was a deep respect and love for music, and I could feel that from them. In addition to the insights they shared with me, they also made me realise the need to work hard, and the need to look with fresh eyes at music no matter how familiar it is.
After school I went to study music at Cambridge, and while there I began to study with Peter Hill, whose recordings I had got to know at school. I had started to play Messiaen's music when he died (in 1992), and as I played more and more Messiaen it seemed natural and only right that I should ask for Peter's advice on my playing. I was also looking for a teacher that could respect the fact that I was by now an adult! What developed took me completely by surprise: we got on so well that we became good friends, which created an ideal environment for learning. I couldn't but respect the beauty of Peter's music making, not to mention the experience he brought to lessons having studied with Messiaen himself; but we also studied so much more – lots of Chopin, Bach, Mozart, Berg and we talked a lot about music.
Later on, more recently, I went to study in Paris with Messiaen's wife, Yvonne Loriod (whom I had first met when I was seventeen). These lessons were extremely moving experiences, where we would play for long periods, chat about Messiaen's life, and also about life in general. Madame Loriod's sheer humanity and kindness remains a huge inspiration to me.
How did you become interested in Contemporary Music?
I have always been interested in contemporary music; I don't think I can remember why or how it happened. I think I have always been open to playing any music.
When I play an "established" piece I try to approach it as if it had just been written, so that I can try to experience how fresh it must have sounded when it was itself new.
You have a special relationship with Messiaen's music. What is it that attracts you about his music?
Messiaen's music has a bit of everything that great music has! Rhythmic vitality; harmonic colour; subtlety and suppleness of expression. The Catholic spirituality in Messiaen interests me greatly, as does his fascination with the natural world. There is also great virtuosity, which of course I enjoy! The first piece of Messiaen I played was, I think, Île de feu No. 1 from the Quatre études de rythme.
What excites you about a piece of music - what keeps you interested?
I like music that seems uncontrived. And it needs to be emotionally direct. I also like a piece to have a strong formal sense, which is not to say that it needs to be structured in an obvious way. One of my favourite pieces of new music is Ian Wilson's Lim, the form of which is discernible almost only when viewed, as it were, from a distance: it proceeds like a stream of consciousness when you're playing or listening to it, though. I'm also very fond of James MacMillan's piano miniatures: everything that is on the page is "necessary". Speaking technically, I like a certain amount of lyricism and rhythmic dynamism. I think you can "feel" when a piece is written well: it validates itself.
And what turns you off?
Complexity that seems to be for its own sake.
What do you see as the role (intended and actual) of new music in the modern world?
Yes, I guess there is indeed a difference between "intended" and "actual" insofar as new music is concerned in the modern world. But maybe it's as simple as this: new music is like old music, and its role is as an expression of the human condition.
How do you go about programming your concerts?
Well, I play pieces that I like! I always think about how a programme will 'feel' to an audience overall. When I programme new music, I do like to give it a context. I experiment often, but never on a complete whim: I weigh it up. I did a recital recently in Cambridge where I decided to make the first half all new music, and then the second half was Schumann's Carnaval; I said to the audience how I though that the Schumann is in itself like a collection of separate, quite avant garde pieces, so it suited.
How do you respond to unsolicited work - do you give feedback? Do you ever commission new work yourself?
Well, unsolicited work I always look at and consider playing. I wouldn't really give feedback about a piece except from the point of view of the practicalities of playing it.
I have commissioned music, including pieces by Jeremy Thurlow and Tim Watts. Ian Wilson is now writing a wonderful piece called Stations for me, which is in fourteen movements divided into four Books; I gave the world premiere of the first two Books at this year's London Festival of Contemporary Church Music, and I hope to "complete" the cycle at the Wigmore Hall next year.
What are you working on at the moment?
At the moment I'm preparing to record Ian Wilson's Limena with the Belgrade Strings. I'm thinking about how to structure my repertoire around concerts in the next couple of seasons. And preparing for the Messiaen centenary in 2008 – a big year!
What are your plans for the future?
Lots of things! I want to record more, including the music that has been written for me and also the Messiaen piano works. I'd also love to commission a piano concerto.
How can people find out more about you?
I have a website, www.matthewschellhorn.com, where there is a schedule of my concerts and items of news; you can also join my newsletter list there. The best way to find out more is to come and hear me play!
www.oliviermessiaen.net – April 2006
Malcolm Ball, founder of oliviermessiaen.net, interviews Matthew Schellhorn
My first encounter with Matthew Schellhorn was at the 2002 Messiaen Conference in Sheffield where he presented a paper entitled ‘Les Noces and Trois petites liturgies: An Assessment of Stravinsky’s Influence on Messiaen’. A brave subject to tackle since Messiaen always publicly refuted any links between the two works. However, Matthew’s analysis and research threw new light on the relationship between the two works citing many cross influences between Stravinsky and Messiaen. At the same conference Matthew also made two concert appearances. One along side Peter Hill performing Visions de l’Amen and the other a dazzling account of La Fauvette des jardins a performance that prompted Chris Dingle of BBC Music Magazine to describe as ‘a cherished memory for those privileged enough to experience it’. For me, I was totally blown away by the sheer energy and power injected into his reading of this incredibly technically demanding music. This was to be repeated with no less gloss in his debut recital at the Purcell Room on London’s South Bank (6th April 2006) as part of the Fresh Young Musician’s Platform series.
It is this ‘power’ in Schellhorn’s playing that sets his interpretations apart from others who are bold enough to tackle these mighty works.
Apart from La Fauvette, Matthew performed four pieces from the Catalogue d’Oiseaux: Le Loriot, Le Traquet stapazin, L’Alouette calandrelle and Le Courlis cendré.
Matthew Schellhorn has the ability to transport his audience to the lakes, mountains and habitats of Messiaen's marvellous birds and we were all touched by his sensitive and masterly interpretations, a fact supported by the enthusiastic reception. As Peter Hill said in his pre concert talk shared with fellow Messiaen authority Nigel Simeone, ‘these works are so rarely performed due to their technical and virtuosic demands’ but Schellhorn surmounted these demands and presented an evening of poetic and musical imagery that, to quote Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen, 'was everything Messiaen would have wished'.
Even during the most complex and dense passages in the music Schellhorn displays the sensitivity and timbre control that bring all the species to life with crystalline clarity. However, the birds are only a part of this music. The landscape, habitats and backdrops are just as important, and it is this aspect that Schellhorn makes the most of and one really feels a sense of the grandeur of the mountains, the crashing of waves, the enormity of nature etc.
When I met with Matthew a month or so before the Purcell Room concert we spoke about his piano education and he revealed that he was 16 years old when he first began to work and study Messiaen’s piano music seriously beginning with Ile de Feu 1, Premiére communion de la Vierge (Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jesus) and Le Courlis cendré (Catalogue d’oiseaux). His love for this music continued to developed and in 2001 he was able to study with Yvonne Loriod in Paris.
He said that the one thing that really came out of these studies was reassurance. Apart from odd technical details, Loriod imparted great personal insight into the music and reassured him that he was doing everything right. A great accolade!
Matthew Schellhorn’s repertoire is wide reaching performing established piano fair by the likes of Beethoven, Chopin and Haydn to 21st century pioneers such as Jeremy Thurlow, James MacMillan and Ian Wilson.
