Information (Newspaper DK)

Messiaens mægtige klaverværk i prægtig tolkning af Kristoffer Hyldig Franske Olivier Messiaens ’Tyve blikke på Jesusbarnet’ er en pilgrimsrejse ind i en altomfattende religiøs verden. Danske Kristoffer Hyldig har begået en pragtindspilning

I løbet af marts 2021 indspillede pianisten Kristoffer Hyldig det klassiske storværk i Vor Frelsers Kirke på Christianshavn. Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus (’Tyve blikke på Jesusbarnet’) af den franske komponist Olivier Messiaen, skabt i 1944 i et Paris, der stadig led under tysk besættelse. Som meget andet fra hans hånd bunder værket i en dyb katolsk tro, og her forsøger han – i mangel af at kunne begribe Gud – at se Ham blot en smule gennem smuk musik. Ganske vist svær at forstå i sin opbygning af suggestive harmonier, farveskalaer og eksotiske rytmer, men enkel at lytte til, når man blot føler den og lader sig overvælde – mente Messiaen.
Kristoffer Hyldig er vel den ypperligste Messiaen-pianist herhjemme, det har han vist gang på gang, men det nye dobbeltalbum manifesterer alligevel denne status på overrumplende vis. Det er en to timer lang pilgrimsrejse ind i en altomfattende religiøs verden. Åndelige vibrationer, som udgår fra naturen, stjernen, moderen, treenigheden, englene, kærligheden, glæden og tiden – fastholdt i blikke på barnet i krybben med dets kosmiske betydning. Det må være en spirituel livsopgave at påtage sig for en pianist, og det lyder også sådan, når man følger Hyldigs færd. I et kirkerum, hvis hvælvinger fortsat må vibrere af årtiers Messiaen-opførelser, som stedets tidligere organist Jens E. Christensen stod for.
Og hvilken lyd! Hyldig bliver eminent understøttet af den erfarne producer og tonemester Preben Iwan med sofistikeret optageudstyr, som overbevisende definerer og perspektiverer den vildt dynamiske musiks parametre i rumdimensionerne.

Gudstemaet
Regard du Père (1) (Faderens blik) er langsomme, sagte gentagelser af en tæt akkordfølge, som Messiaen kalder Gudstemaet. Det ændrer sig subtilt i en mørk, svævende døsen hos Hyldig, og for hver udklang klinger en række præcist afstemte overtoner i det lyse register. Som en evighedsmusik. Optagelsens klarhed er forbløffende, nærhed og afstand bliver indfanget med den fine anslagskontrol og tempoets urokkelighed.
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) ønskede som Stravinskij at forny den vestlige musiktraditions rytmeopfattelse, han gjorde det ved at finde inspiration i det gamle Grækenland og i Indien. Han kombinerede de fremmede versemåls korte og lange stavelser på nye og stedse mere komplicerede måder og opbyggede nye farveskalaer ud fra den kromatiske skala med 12 forskellige halvtoner. Det blev et nyt egenartet musikalsk sprog, som kommer smukt og enkelt til udtryk i Regard de la Vierge (4) (Jomfru Marias blik). To græske versemål afløses af to farveskalaer, skær krystalmusik over for pågående bølger af lysglimt, alt sammen spillet i instrumentets lyse registre.
Hele universet sættes i bevægelse i Par Lui tout a été fait (6) (Af Ham er alt blevet skabt). Messiaen citerer evangelisten Johannes i sin forklaring: »Af ordet er alt skabt, og uden det er intet skabt.« Det er noget, ingen kan tale om, fortsætter Messiaen, og derfor har han skjult sig bag en fuga. En monstrøs fuga med forbillede i Bachs Kunst der Fuge og Beethovens Hammerklaversonate. Messiaens fuga er tilsvarende personligt udformet, men med anvendelse af barokkens temabehandlinger som omvending, krebsegang, forlængelse, forkortelse, modstemmer.
Det er forløb på forløb i dionysiske klangeksplosioner, inspireret af ordet: læsningen af bøger om astronomi og atomfysik, de største tings orden og de mindste tings orden.
Kristoffer Hyldigs tackling af dette oprørte tonehav er sandt at sige en utrættelig, blodrig og virtuost gennemført performance. Og det er interessant at sammenligne ham med Messiaen-pianisten par excellence, hustruen Yvonne Loriod, som indspillede værket i 1993. Hendes tolkning er uhyre stringent, på sin vis dybere end Hyldig i realiseringen af den rytmiske kompleksitet og derfor mere apollinsk end dionysisk.
Hvad Hyldig dog lykkes overmåde godt med, er dynamikkontrollen, gradueringerne af selv de kraftige styrkegrader.

Fuglestemmer og englebasun
Et af Messiaens livstemaer var fuglestemmerne. At studere dem overalt, hvor han kom, gav ham retten til at være komponist, sagde han. Fuglene optræder i mange af hans værker, og det var næsten uomgængeligt, at han måtte skrive en opera over den hellige Frans af Assisi, munken, som forstod fuglenes sprog og prædikede for disse skabninger, der i en vis forstand er tættere på Gud end menneskene.
Fuglene hører man også i Regard des Hauteurs (8) (Højdernes blik). Englenes sang kom fra den højeste julenat, og det symboliseres ved fuglesang: sangdroslen, nattergalen, solsorten, havesangeren og ikke mindst den store solist, lærken, den åbne himmels fugl, skriver Messiaen.
Kristoffer Hyldig viser sig som en intens musikornitolog i disse korte sangsekvenser – lyse, spidse, energiske, reciterende, i solo, i duet og i et helt fuglekor. Superbt gengivet i rumakustikken.
»Dine tjenere er flammer af ild,« står der i en Davids salme. Det er grundtanken i Regard des Anges (14) (Englenes blik). Og endnu et bibelsk billede føjer han til, af Michelangelo i Det Sixtinske Kapel, fresken Dommedag med de atletiske engle i menneskeskikkelse, der med øjnene fordrejet af anstrengelse blæser i mægtige basuner. Disse dybe basuntoner tordner igen og igen i klaverbassen, mens den hurtigere diskantmelodi lyner og stråler.
Klaviaturet har åbnet sig som en afgrund med hænderne på hver side af kanterne, sådan som også Beethoven gjorde det, og sammen med fuglesang og heftige rytmiske bølger står det vældig stærkt hos Hyldig.
I den efterfølgende sats yder pianisten øjeblikke af sublim klangkunst. Le Baiser de L’Enfant-Jésus (15) (Jesusbarnets kys). Det er nadvermusik, først med Gudstemaet i gentagelsernes tyste åndedrag. Barnet sover ved nadveren og åbner så porten til en vidunderlig have for at styrte sig frem i det klare lys med udbredte arme og kysse menneskene.
Satsen benytter sig af en skala eller modus, som han kaldte den, hvor et halvtonetrin efterfølges af et heltonetrin fire gange. Det er disse anderledes farver, en slags trolddom, der kan vække de ædleste følelser i os, mente han. Den modus med otte forskellige toner, der her er tale om, er noteret som Fis-dur, som Messiaen benyttede i stor udstrækning i sine værker for at udtrykke transcenderende stemninger.
Modusen anvender lige så mange hvide som sorte tangenter og kan i symbolsk forstand siges at afbalancere lyset og mørket.

Ultimativ kærlighed
Vi befinder os altså i denne tonale belysning i Le Baiser de L’Enfant-Jésus. Forløbet følger billedet med søvnen, haven, de udstrakte arme, kysset – en langsomt stigende acceleration af rytmisk energi og jubeltoner. Begyndende med Hyldigs fornemme klanglægning af Gudstemaets tætte akkordspil, og senere, når temaet får tilført en overstemme med eksalterede udsmykninger som i en nocturne af Chopin, har han hænderne mere end fulde og stadig i fuld kontrol. Der kommer hasarderede skift i tempo og teknik, grandiose improvisationer, stadig er Gudstemaet flettet ind, snart i den ene hånd, snart i den anden. Og det, som Messiaen sikkert ville kalde den ultimative kærlighed, når omsider tidens fylde i kyssets ekstatiske forvandlingsmusik. Alt komponeret med sindets ligevægt og troens klarhed.
Der ligger en hel del matematik bag denne musik, Kristoffer Hyldig har brugt sin tid på at begribe den, og med den vundne indsigt og sit pianistiske mesterskab fortjener han en stor lytterskare. Valdemar Lønsted, 27.03.2023
kultur@information.dk
Olivier Messiaen: ’Vingt Regards sur L’Enfant-Jésus’. Kristoffer Hyldig (klaver). Dobbeltalbum. Lydteknik: Preben Iwan. Our Recordings.


Google Translation.

Danish Newspaper Information


Messiaen's mighty piano work in a splendid interpretation by Kristoffer Hyldig French Olivier Messiaen's 'Twenty glances at the Child Jesus' is a pilgrimage into an all-encompassing religious world. Danish Kristoffer Hyldig has made a magnificent recording

During March 2021, the pianist Kristoffer Hyldig recorded the classical masterpiece in Vor Frelsers Kirke in Christianshavn. Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus ('Twenty glances at the child Jesus') by the French composer Olivier Messiaen, created in 1944 in a Paris that was still suffering from German occupation. Like much else from his hand, the work is based on a deep Catholic faith, and his - in the absence of being able to understand God - he tries to see Him just a little through beautiful music. Admittedly difficult to understand in its structure of suggestive harmonies, color scales and exotic rhythms, but easy to listen to when you simply feel it and let yourself be overwhelmed - thought Messiaen.
Kristoffer Hyldig is probably the most excellent Messiaen pianist here, he has shown that time and time again, but the new double album nevertheless manifests this status in a surprising way. It is a two-hour pilgrimage into an all-encompassing religious world. Spiritual vibrations emanating from nature, the star, the mother, the trinity, the angels, love, joy and time – held in the gaze of the child in the manger with its cosmic significance. It must be a spiritual life task for a pianist to take on, and it also sounds like that when you follow Hyldig's progress. In a church room whose vaults must continue to vibrate from decades of Messiaen performances, which the place's former organist, Jens E. Christensen, was in charge of.
And what a sound! Hyldig is eminently supported by the experienced producer and tone master Preben Iwan with sophisticated recording equipment, which convincingly defines and puts into perspective the parameters of the wildly dynamic music in the dimensions of space.

The God theme
Regard du Père (1) (Look of the Father) are slow, soft repetitions of a close chord sequence that Messiaen calls the God Theme. It changes subtly in a dark, floating doze with Hyldig, and with each ending a series of precisely tuned overtones sound in the bright register. Like eternal music. The clarity of the recording is astonishing, proximity and distance are captured with the fine touch control and the steadfastness of the tempo.
Like Stravinsky, Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) wanted to renew the Western musical tradition's perception of rhythm, he did so by finding inspiration in ancient Greece and India. He combined the short and long syllables of the foreign verses in new and ever more complicated ways and built new color scales from the chromatic scale with 12 different semitones. It became a new unique musical language, which is expressed beautifully and simply in Regard de la Vierge (4) (Virgin Mary's gaze). Two Greek verse measures are replaced by two chromatic scales, cut crystal music against ongoing waves of flashes of light, all played in the bright registers of the instrument.
The whole universe is set in motion in Par Lui tout a été fait (6) (By Him everything was created). Messiaen quotes the evangelist John in his explanation: "From the word everything was created, and without it nothing was created." It is something that no one can talk about, Messiaen continues, and that is why he has hidden behind a fugue. A monstrous fugue modeled on Bach's Kunst der Fuge and Beethoven's Hammer Piano Sonata. Messiaen's fugue is similarly personally designed, but with the use of baroque thematic treatments such as reversal, crepuscular passage, extension, shortening, counterparts.
It is progression upon progression in Dionysian explosions of sound, inspired by the word: the reading of books on astronomy and atomic physics, the order of the greatest things and the order of the smallest things.
Kristoffer Hyldig's tackling of this agitated tonality is, to say the truth, a tireless, bloody and virtuoso performance. And it is interesting to compare him with the Messiaen pianist par excellence, his wife Yvonne Loriod, who recorded the work in 1993. Her interpretation is extremely rigorous, in a way deeper than Hyldig in the realization of the rhythmic complexity and therefore more Apollonian than Dionysian.
What Hyldig succeeds exceedingly well with, however, is the dynamic control, the gradations of even the strong degrees of strength.

Birds' voices and angel's trumpet
One of the life themes of Messiaen was the voices of birds. Studying them wherever he went gave him the right to be a composer, he said. The birds appear in many of his works, and it was almost inevitable that he had to write an opera about Saint Francis of Assisi, the monk who understood the language of birds and preached to these creatures, who are in a certain sense closer to God than humans.
The birds are also heard in Regard des Hauteurs (8) (Look of the Heights). The angels' song came from the highest Christmas night, and it is symbolized by birdsong: the song thrush, the nightingale, the blackbird, the garden warbler and not least the great soloist, the lark, the bird of the open sky, writes Messiaen.
Kristoffer Hyldig shows himself as an intense musical ornithologist in these short song sequences – bright, sharp, energetic, reciting, in solo, in duet and in a whole bird choir. Superbly reproduced in room acoustics.
"Your servants are flames of fire," says a Psalm of David. This is the basic idea in Regard des Anges (14) (The gaze of the angels). And he adds another biblical image, by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, the fresco Day of Judgment with the athletic angels in human form, who, with their eyes distorted by exertion, blow mighty trumpets. These deep bass notes thunder again and again in the piano bass, while the faster treble melody flashes and shines.
The piano has opened up like an abyss with the hands on either side of the edges, just as Beethoven did, and together with birdsong and fierce rhythmic waves it stands out very strongly with Hyldig.
In the following movement, the pianist provides moments of sublime sound art. Le Baiser de L'Enfant-Jésus (15) (The Kiss of the Child Jesus). It is communion music, first with the God Theme in the silent breath of the repetitions. The child sleeps at communion and then opens the gate to a wonderful garden to rush forward into the bright light with outstretched arms and kiss the people.
The movement uses a scale or mode, as he called it, where a semitone step is followed by a whole step four times. It is these different colors, a kind of sorcery, that can awaken the noblest feelings in us, he thought. The mode with eight different notes in question here is notated as F major, which Messiaen used extensively in his works to express transcendent moods.
The mode uses as many white as black keys and can be said, in a symbolic sense, to balance the light and the dark.

Ultimate love
So we find ourselves in this tonal illumination in Le Baiser de L'Enfant-Jésus. The sequence follows the picture with the sleep, the garden, the outstretched arms, the kiss – a slowly increasing acceleration of rhythmic energy and notes of jubilation. Beginning with Hyldig's refined intonation of the close chordal playing of the God theme, and later, when the theme is given an upper voice with exalted embellishments as in a nocturne by Chopin, he has his hands more than full and still in full control. There are random changes in tempo and technique, grandiose improvisations, the God theme is still interwoven, soon in one hand, soon in the other. And what Messiaen would probably call the ultimate love, finally reaches the fullness of time in the ecstatic transformational music of the kiss. All composed with balance of mind and clarity of faith.
There is a lot of mathematics behind this music, Kristoffer Hyldig has spent his time understanding it, and with the insight gained and his pianistic mastery, he deserves a large audience. Valdemar Lønsted, 27.03.2023 kultur@information.dk

Olivier Messiaen: 'Vingt Regards sur L'Enfant-Jésus'. Kristoffer Hyldig (piano). Double album. Sound engineering: Preben Iwan. Our Recordings.