Mark Fewer
violin
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Mark Fewer in "new" Messiaen work
July 29, 2008, 9:00 pm
Chamber Music Review: First night of Messiaen tribute
Richard Todd, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) was one of the giants of 20th century music.
A prolific composer, his music is not widely heard today; not because anyone doubts his greatness but because his vocabulary was so personal and unusual that much of what he wrote is inaccessible to the casual listener.
He was the teacher of almost every important French composer of the second half of the century.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of his birth and last night at Dominion-Chalmers Church the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival presented the first of three concerts celebrating this centennial.
There were easily 800 people in the audience, the reputation for difficulty notwithstanding.
The first half of the program was given to three organ works performed by Thomas Annand and the Canadian premier of the Fantasie, performed by violinist Mark Fewer and pianist Jacynth Riverin.
Space does not permit describing each of them except to say that each had its unique strengths. But two in particular stand out.
The Fantasie was written when the composer was just 25. He put it aside, however, and it was only discovered after his death and published as recently as last year.
It is not very characteristic of the composer, but it is a powerful work and more melodic than his more mature music.
Fewer and Reverin dug right in and delivered an entirely persuasive performance.
Verset pour la fête de la dé dicase is one of those works in which the composer uses more or less literal quotations of bird song.
He was, among other things, a distinguished ornithologist. Organist Annand delivered a well-considered and beautiful account of the piece.
The major work on the program was Messiaen's Quartet for the end of Time, one of the great masterworks of music. The performance by clarinettist James Campbell and the Gryphon Trio would have been terrific on its own, but there was an additional dimension to the presentation.
Messiaen saw colours when he heard certain sounds, particularly musical chords. He didn't imagine them, he saw them.
In an attempt to demonstrate how they might have looked to him, an eye-shaped screen was hung over the piano and splashes of colour were projected onto it.
The beam was not strong enough to provide sufficient contrast under the house lighting, but it was easy to see that the effect would be striking with better execution.
Ottawa Citizen
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