Symphony Concert: Turangalîla

The key to musical modernity is said to lie in that unresolved, drifting Tristan chord: Richard Wagner’s epochal music drama Tristan und Isolde takes up the idea of unquenchable desire from the High Medieval Codex Menasse and propels it into the transcendental. Complicated by a love potion and unbroken in the Liebestod (Love-Death), the fibres of the musical fabric stretch. The prelude also gained fame through Lars von Trier’s film Melancholia, in whose wake an oversized moon hurtles towards Earth. This image would surely have appealed to Olivier Messiaen, even though his work on the Tristan theme exists far removed from Wagner’s sonic cosmos. Turangalîla, a central part of Messiaen's Tristan trilogy, is a neologism from Sanskrit, combining «turanga» – time running like a galloping horse – with «lîla,» the cosmic game. Analyses of his only symphony in ten movements fill entire books. Messiaen contented himself with the statement: «This work is a love song. I do not consider it necessary to offer further explanations.» Maxime Pascal, Principal Guest Conductor at Deutsche Oper Berlin, conducted Messiaen’s only opera, Saint François d’Assise, in Salzburg in the summer of 2026; now he continues his exploration of this composer.