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MORS & VITA - BERTOGLIO

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MORS & VITA ( CVLD231 )

Author : MP MUSSORGSKY O. MESSIAEN
Performer : CHIARA BERTOGLIO

Notes

Original compositions by MP Mussorgskij / NA Rimskij-Korsakov, O. Messiaen.
Chiara Bertoglio Grandpiano.
24bit/88.2 kHz original live-in-studio-recorded, in Velut Luna Studio, Preganziol, Italy, on August 5,6-2012.

Messiaen and Mussorgsky: two personalities, two styles, two completely different approaches to life, faith and music. The first: a French composer of the twentieth century, with a musical language that mixes modes of pitch and rhythm, birdsong, Indian rhythms, cryptographies and symbolisms, and even rare serial passages. The second: one of the Five greats who promoted an authentically Russian music at the end of the nineteenth century; one whose extraordinary talent was not caged by the scholastic schemes of professionalism, and maintained the sovereign creative freedom of the “dilettante”, in the best sense of the word. The first: a fervent Catholic who never made a secret of his faith and how it inspired his entire musical production. The second: always in search of the infinite, perpetually tormented by doubts, constantly under the frightening shadow of death, his true and only muse. However, as we will see (and hear), these two opposite personalities have much in common, much more than one would expect.
It is true that Messiaen greatly admired Mussorgsky, and that his own language is indebted to that of the Russian composer. The Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jésus are twenty musical contemplations of the baby Jesus. They are not, as one might imagine, sugary holy pictures: on the contrary, they are pieces of great theological and conceptual complexity, transmitted above all through the precise symbolism of the leitmotifs. Among these, we should mention the “God theme” (a series of chords that evoke the “Triunity”), which entirely informs number 1, Regard du Père, and which frequently returns in the Première Communion de la Vierge; and the “Star and Cross theme”, which links the mystery of Christ's incarnation with that of his Passion (no. 2). In Première Communion, Messiaen explores the relationship between the Virgin Mary and her child during the nine months of pregnancy, assimilating the supernatural (and yet also so natural) communion between mother and child with that brought to the believer by the Eucharist.
The contrast between this intimate and holy scene and the hellish Night on Bald Mountain could not be stronger. Mussorgsky's famous piece, a symphonic poem performed here in Konstantin Chernov's fascinating piano transcription, depicts a Sabbath in honor of Chernobog, the "black god" of Slavic mythology. In reality, it is a pagan cult of darkness and evil, rather than a simple magical festival: for Mussorgsky, there is a strong connection between witchcraft, paganism, hell and evil. The Sabbath ends with the first tolling of the bells of matins, on the feast of St. John; however, this conclusion does not appear as a clear triumph of good over evil, but rather as a truce between two equally strong armies.
It is therefore significant that a similar starting point leads Mussorgsky to a very different conclusion in Pictures at an Exhibition, a cycle composed in memory of Viktor Hartmann, Mussorgsky's painter friend, who died suddenly in the composer's presence. As mentioned earlier, the theme of death is a constant in Mussorgsky's life and work, and, naturally, it becomes particularly central here. The Pictures of the first part, interspersed with the Promenades (a musical symbol of Mussorgsky himself and his emotional reactions to the pictures) are delightful and sometimes very profound images: a terrifying gnome, the impossible serenade of the village idiot to the most beautiful girl (The Old Castle), the children's quarrel after the game (Tuileries), the heavy burden and the laborious advance of Poland towards independence, symbolized by that of an ox cart in the mud (Bydło), the ballet of the chicks in their shells, and the caricature of two Jews, a rich man and a beggar (Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle). In the second part, however, Mussorgsky draws an astonishing itinerary among the greatest questions of humanity. Limoges represents a market, with its thousand sounds, colors, smells: a symbol of life, of vitality, of encounters, upon which, like an axe, death falls in Catacombae (think of Hartmann's sudden death). Mussorgsky's musical alter-ego, the theme of the Promenade, resounds under spectral tremolos, almost as if to signify the death of the composer himself. Baba-Yaga, a horrible witch, is also here a symbol of evil, of hell, of man's ancestral fears. Her apparent triumph is however swept away by the Great Gate of Kiev, under which a religious procession winds: we hear the sound of bells, of the organ, of choirs of priests; the theme of the Promenade, portrayed as "dead" in Catacombae, is here found "resurrected". It is life after death, the possibility of maintaining our relationships with those we have loved through death, beyond death, and forever.
Chiara Bertoglio

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