Mystic music from Messiaen, Debussy, Bruckner

Imagine one Mark Rothko painting on the left, Gericault’s The Raft of the Medusa in the middle, and another Rothko on the right.

Messaien’s Les offrandes oubliées (The forgotten offerings), which the Milwaukee Symphony played at Friday’s matinee, is like that: Sublime, spiritual and ineffable in its quivering outer sections, violent and intentionally vulgar in between. And gripping throughout.

Like the two Rothko paintings, Messiaen’s first and third sections differ in color and slightly in mood. In the first section, a chant theme meanders in the violins against a haze of sustained woodwind harmony. A version of that theme returns in the violins. But in the final section, the first few stands of second violins and violas play higher, brighter harmony, sunlight compared to the preceding woodwind moonglow. It’s heavenly music, from a composer who believed in heaven and thought about it a lot.

Edo de Waart conducted. Very little visible effort led to glorious results — his real work apparently was accomplished in rehearsal. We’ve come to expect that from this music director, as we’ve come to expect intense effort and concentration from this orchestra.

All conditions held through a mesmerizing reading of Debussy’s La Mer (The Sea). The sway and weight of it became palpable as de Waart measured its shifting meters and their pendulous energies. That and the shimmering surface of the music would have been enough, but de Waart and his players balanced and tuned so beautifully that you could hear into the depths, to the luminescent inner voices and their wakes of eddies and swirls.

The sensual reverie of this music came to full bloom because everyone had absorbed La Mer fully. Ensemble could not have been better, but nothing felt careful. Debussy’s trickiness of rhythm did not come into play; you never felt anyone counting. The perception was of completely unfettered, natural ebb and flow of sound.

Bruckner’s Symphony No. 6 filled the second half. Bruckner, in this declarative, forward-driving piece, especially, lived in a very different world than Debussy. To my ear, he sounded a little crude and square next to the Frenchmen, both rhythmically and on his reliance on blasting brass to drive home climaxes. But the piece certainly has its moments, notably in the exquisite second theme of the slow movement, which arrives entwined in rich countermelody here and in simple canon there.

De Waart knew exactly what he wanted. He unleashed the brasses to a degree I’ve rarely heard from the MSO, because he knew Bruckner needed that blast. And he saw to smaller details in his usual thoughtful and compelling way. I’m thinking especially of the second movement, which opens with a brawny, Brahmsian theme in the low strings. Woodwind ornaments flit above it. They were charming and decorative at first, but as the theme developed those ornaments took on increasingly edgier accents and timbres. The birds in the trees were telling us that trouble was coming to the forest. Little things such as that bring out the drama in music.

By the way: De Waart and the MSO will perform the two French pieces at Carnegie Hall in New York on May 11. The other New York piece is Qigang Chen’s Iris dévoilée, which they will play in Milwaukee May 4-5.

Repeat Performance: The MSO will repeat the Messiaen/Debussy/Bruckner program, given at Marcus Center Uihlein Hall, at 8 p.m. Saturday, April 28. For further information, visit the MSO website. For tickets, call the Marcus Center box office, 414 273-7206, the MSO ticket line (414 291-7605) or visit the MSO’s website.