14 May 2026
We approached the DR Koncerthuset in Copenhagen on foot from the centre of the city, walking past the university towards a campus that houses DR (Danmarks Radio), which, like the BBC, is just over 100 years old. Like the BBC’s northern base at Media City UK, the campus can be reached by tram and features water as part of its architecture.
The French composer Olivier Messiaen famously had synaesthesia, which meant that he saw certain harmonies as specific colours. So the hall could have reminded him of some of the harmonies from his epic work that we heard in Thursday evening, Turangalîla-symphonie, which he saw as blue-orange; the outside of the building glows blue at night, and the auditorium is a vivid orange.
The hall’s acoustics are designed on the ‘vineyard’ principle, with the stage in the middle and several small terraces at different levels surrounding the stage. The earliest example of this style is the Berliner Philharmonie, opened in 1963. Other European examples include the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, the Philharmonie in Paris, and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg (next stop on our tour). The most striking aspect of the auditorium at the DR Koncerthuset is that there are virtually no horizontal or vertical surfaces; everything leans one way or another. The aim is to create early reflections of the sound, making it intimate and detailed at every seat.
From our seats on the second balcony near the back of the hall, the sound was stunning. Messiaen’s Turangalîla calls for a huge orchestra, in this case the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, with no fewer than ten percussionists, solo piano and that wonderfully strange electronic instrument, the Ondes Martenot. The balance between the instruments was perfect, beautifully shaped by the Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, who says that the symphony is one of his favourite pieces. Bertrand Chamayou was a virtuosic pianist, playing Messiaen’s piano parts with a robust touch. Cécile Lartigau played the Ondes Martenot with elegance and subtlety, her bright orange jacket matching the hall’s décor.
“The music consists of otherworldly orchestral sounds in cascades of psychedelic colours. With that imaginary world, you might think that Olivier Messiaen lived on hallucinatory mushrooms and was completely ungrounded. That was not the case… The intoxicant that gave wings to his imagination was love and the Catholic faith.”
Programme notes from the Danish National Symphony Orchestra
When Turangalîla was premiered in New York in 1949, the critical response was generally negative. It was described as ‘futile’, ‘empty’, ‘tawdry’. However, one critic did describe it as ‘one of the most radical extensions of orchestral range, color and expressivity contrived by any modern composer.’ After the French premiere in 1950, the composer Francis Poulenc described it as ‘atrocious’ and criticised its dishonesty, ‘written to please both the crowd and the élite, the bidet and the baptismal font.’ Pierre Boulez, Messiaen’s pupil and a famous provocateur (he once told me that to move on musically, he had metaphorically to ‘kill’ his father-figure Messiaen), said it made him want to ‘vomit.’
The only way to enjoy the symphony fully is to accept it entirely on Messiaen’s terms; despite what Poulenc said about it, the work is completely honest and sincere. He wrote that its ultimate subject is ‘The fateful, irresistible, transcendent and all-encompassing love.’ The performance on Thursday was astonishing. What Salonen brought out superbly, assisted by the hall’s excellent acoustics, was the strange paradox of this work. It’s both incredibly simple, based on only four repetitive themes, and immensely complex in its rhythmic patterns and orchestral textures. At the centre of its ten movements are two extraordinary movements: the fifth, ‘Joie du Sang des étoiles (Joy of the blood of the stars), which the composer described as ‘a long and frenzied dance of joy’, and the sixth, ‘Jardin du Sommeil d’amour’ (Garden of love’s sleep), in which, ‘time flows on, forgotten. The lovers are outside of time.’ But on Thursday evening, the Finale was the highlight, the audience rising to its feet in an ecstatic standing ovation.
As the Danish say, ‘næste stop, Hamburg’ (next stop, Hamburg)!
Thursday’s concert was broadcast live on P2 Koncerten. It will be rebroadcast on Sunday at 12:15. The concert was recorded for later television broadcast on DR2/DRTV and will also be available in cinemas nationwide in Denmark this autumn.
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