Both audience & player go on a journey together: Latvian pianist Reinis Zariņš discusses Messiaen’s Vingt Regards which he performs at the London Piano Festival

Reinis Zariņš (Photo: Andris Sprogis)

Latvian pianist Reinis Zariņš will be performing Olivier Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus, a work for which he is becoming known, at the London Piano Festival, co-Artistic Directors Charles Owen and Katya Apekisheva, at Kings Place on Sunday 6 October 2024. 

Written in 1944 and completed shortly after the liberation of Paris, the work premiered in 1945. A two-hour long, 20-movement meditation on the infancy of Jesus, Messiaen’s work has a distinct wow factor and it has played a significant role in Reinis’ performing life. Katya Apekisheva heard him playing it and was determined to find ways to get him to perform it again. He is delighted to be performing it at the London Piano Festival and somewhat amazed that the festival has found a way to include a recital that consists solely of one religiously flavoured piece. He understands how tricky programming is nowadays, so this result is a landmark achievement!

He first studied the work at Yale, during the Messiaen centenary when the members of his class each learned a couple of movements. He was given movements 5 and 6, two of the more difficult ones and these set him on his journey, learning the other movements and hearing other pianists performing the work, taking several years. He describes it as an absolutely genius concert piece, with its two-hour length there is nothing quite like it. Reinis feels that the thematic arrangement of the work with Messiaen’s use of leitmotifs makes it rather like an instrumental opera, which is how he thinks of it, and it is this hidden narrative which contributes to the work’s impact.

Like Olivier Messiaen, Reinis has synesthesia. Reinis loves the colours in Messiaen’s writing, making it a sensual experience for him. Messiaen’s later music often uses such complex chords that the colours he perceives often mix thickly together, diminishing the emotional impact particular colours have. Another feature of the work is Messiaen’s love of nature and birdsong (Messiaen would say that birdsong is the greatest music of all). Reinis’ lockdown project was to learn Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux though he has not had a chance to perform it yet.

Pianistically, Messiaen writes some of the most complex piano writing but Reinis likes a challenge, and he also likes long-form pieces. With these longer pieces, he feels that a performance becomes a communal experience as both the audience and player go on a journey together. Then when a work like Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus ends can be an affirmation that we have experienced something important. A performance can be a catharsis too, if listeners do participate. And Reinis feels that in the work, Messiaen comes close to a sense of heaven in music, so who would not want to hear it?

Throughout the years with this work, Reinis has read a great deal about it, however, he never came across anything investigating the significance that Messiaen wrote the work during World War Two.

However, the last time Reinis played it, it was the night before Russia invaded Ukraine, and in the run up to that performance Reinis, for the first time, came across an article about the war context in the genesis of Vingt regards.

It was written during the Paris occupation, but Messiaen does not seem to be reflecting on this. Instead, the composer is meditating on wider events. Reinis sees Messiaen as being more courageous than in his earlier works, as he has the courage to investigate the Incarnation in unprecedented depth. Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time (written 1941) is not, Reinis feels, as multi-faceted work as Vingt Regards. War can bring out the best or the worst in people; Messiaen, seeing tanks on the streets of Paris, chose to meditate on the event that, at least in his eyes, has left the most lasting positive effect on humankind in history, as opposed to the war that was going on locally at the time. And, by doing so, Reinis thinks, Messiaen cared for the survival of our humanness, rather than for a narrow personal gain.

We can all divorce music from its extra-musical context, it doesn’t fall apart if we do not know its title and content, and surely Vingt Regards can work like that. However, Messiaen was explicit that a lot of the music was intended to share important theological truths. It wasn’t written for a mystical or a sensual experience but to convey rational theological thoughts. For Messiaen, contemplating these could change your life. And again we come back to the idea of the work being like an instrumental opera. And like an opera, if we take away the plot, what is left? Nice tunes and high notes, Reinis comments. So without Messiaen’s structure of rational theological thought, the work does not have meaning. The theological content is central, and the work makes a grand arc from first to last, all directly related. I was interested to know whether Reinis thought we should sympathise with Messiaen’s take on Christianity. He comments that people listen to Bach’s Passions and Handel’s Messiah, and these works have a more explicit Christian message than Vingt regards; most people probably do not sympathise with the message, but they allow the music to speak to them.

Messiaen wrote Vingt Regards for everyone, not just for Christians, but he assumes his audiences have basic knowledge of the Christian story about Christ’s birth and death, and to this essential story he adds some simple theological ideas to help us think deeper about the story, and during the interview Reinis demonstrates how Messiaen uses musical tools to create a picture of the doctrine of the Trinity. There are many other such elements in the work, and some of them speak directly to everyone, while others can be known only by the performer.

Messiaen shares these truths with such absolute passion that it is hard to be indifferent. For Reinis the most memorable movements are the terrifying ones, which make us really listen, rather than the gentle ones, and he cites the creation of the cosmos which has nothing nice about it, putting fear in him as a player. There is no sentimentality in the work, it is full-blooded in joy and in fearsomeness, at times wild and over the top.

Messiaen’s Ving Regards is now 80 years old and should be a classic, but it is not that easy to programme, with Advent and Christmas reflecting the work best. It has become one of his trademark pieces, sometimes Reinis plays the whole work, but he also programmes separate movements, though some seem more self-contained than others and he feels that the more terrifying ones need some sort of context.

Another area of music that Reinis is known for is espousing works by Latvian composers, both forgotten pieces and music written for him. A lot of his energy is devoted to Latvian music, with most of his albums including music by Latvian composers. He tries to include Latvian works in programmes when he is travelling, but frankly it is easier to programme these when he is in Latvia or one of the Baltic states, as this area seems more open to fresh programming. In general, he feels that the typical concert formula of giving a contemporary or unknown work just 10% airtime in an otherwise classical programme inevitably makes that work look suspicious, risky. Reinis would like to encourage those responsible for programming choices to take the risk of trusting their audiences more and thus allow more freshness into the concert hall, if possible, avoiding political colouring altogether. London Piano Festival seems to be one example to follow.

He gets a good response to Pēteris Vasks‘ music; the composer has a strong reputation in the West yet his music is very Latvian, not so much from his use of folklore but because he can translate the Latvian DNA into music [see Reinis disc of Vasks’ music on Ondine]. For Reinis, Vasks has found a way to show the world, through his music, the particular beauty of Latvian nature, the particular darkness of Latvian history, and even the Latvian archetypes and spirituality.

Another composer that Reinis mentions is Lūcija Garūta (1902-1977), the first major female Latvian composer. She was famous during the Soviet era, however her music was censored. Her Piano Concerto from 1952 is a wonderful work, Reinis feels, yet it was censored by the Soviet authorities simply because it was too tragic. Reinis’ 2017 disc on Skani includes Garūta’s Piano Concerto along with solo piano works. He feels that there is something in her late romantic music that makes her stand apart, and he had lots of enquiries about her music after the recording. One problem was the lack of availability of her music in modern editions, there were only either Soviet printed editions or manuscript. But now her music is going out into the world more.

Reinis Zariņš (Photo: Aivars Kesteris)

September sees Reinis performing with violinist Gidon Kremer and the musicians from Kremerata Baltica, and in November he is in China with violinist Viktoria Mullova, then in December he returns to Trio Palladio (with two other Latvian artists, violinist Eva Bindere and cellist Kristine Blaumane). See Reinis’ website for full details.

The London Piano Festival is at Kings Place from 4 to 6 October 2024, see website for details.
Reinis Zariņš performs Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus at 12pm on 6 October [further details], and Stephen Johnson give a pre-concert talk at 11am [further details].