Czech Philharmonic ⬩ Magdalena Kožená

Spring enchained, light rainbow of morning,
Ah! my necklace! Ah! my necklace!
Small living support of my weary ears,
Necklace of renewal, of smiles, of grace,
Oriental necklace, chosen, multicoloured
With hard, whimsical pearls!
Curving landscape, espousing the fresh morning air,
Ah! my necklace! Ah! my necklace!
Your two arms round my neck, this morning.
– Olivier Messiaen: Poèmes pour Mi

It is characteristic that the necklace around Messiaen’s neck in his surrealistic poem is multicoloured. When the French composer first saw the stained glass windows of the Sainte-Chapelle chapel in Paris at the age of ten, he experienced a fascination that influenced him all his life. Besides being keenly interested in ornithology, he was well known for having chromesthesia—aural stimulation created associations in his mind with colours. “I don’t see the colours with my eyes, but I do see them in my mind. It is necessary to see how sound moves. The notes come one after another like the colours of a rainbow. It’s a fleeting thing that cannot ever be captured fully.”

He regarded birds as the best artists, and he enjoyed recording birdsong. For human musicians, he added at least some instructions on how to conceive a particular composition in terms of colour. “I don’t expect them to see the same shades of colour as I do—that is not even possible—but for them each to perceive the colours in their own way.”

Messiaen dedicated his Poèmes pour Mi to his first wife, Claire Delbos, whom he nicknamed “Mi”. The cycle, with texts inspired by the New Testament, describes the relationship and shared spiritual path of a husband and wife, and it points to another theme that runs through the composer’s works—the Christian faith.

Another colourful work was written by one of Messiaen’s favourite composers, Claude Debussy, whose music is often described as the musical equivalent of Impressionists’ brushstrokes, in which the subjectivity of what is perceived comes to the fore. Debussy was inspired to write his three-movement composition Nocturnes by a series of paintings with the same title by James Whistler that use light to capture the atmosphere of the Thames and other rivers. Just like Messiaen’s Poèmes pour Mi, the work had its premiere in the year of the composer’s 29th birthday.

Gustav Mahler was just two years older at the premiere of his Fourth Symphony. In his symphony, the traditionally generous composer included a song about a child’s vision of heaven, which he had already considered using in his Third Symphony. About working with the Czech Philharmonic, mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená says: “I was completely enchanted by the orchestra’s sound in Maher. In fact, my husband also says the orchestra has the most beautiful and most authentic sound that Mahler would have liked most of all.”