At the Thursday concert on 28 September, concertgoers could experience - and P2 listeners could also hear - an instrument that has never before been seen or heard in the Concert Hall. It is an electronic instrument with the mysterious name ”ondes Martenot”. It sounds undeniably French, and it is.
At the keyboard-like instrument sat French Valérie Hartmann Claverie as soloist in Olivier Messiaen's Turangalilla Symphony, an 80-minute work from 1948 (revised in 1990) in ten movements that is a tribute to love. And to birds, which the composer was deeply interested in.
The ondes Martenot instrument is capable of producing bird sounds that are very loud and sound very penetrating among the other instruments in the orchestra. It can also make note transitions that cannot be produced on traditional musical instruments. In addition to the familiar white and black keys, there are - see picture - ”metal switches” under the keys and the feet are in use.
The Danish National Symphony Orchestra has a number of infrequently used instruments in its depots, from Spanish castanets to the special Aida trumpets and a huge wooden block with an oversized wooden mallet that is only used in one of Mahler's symphonies. But en ondes Martenot is not part of the collection. So Valérie Hartmann Claverie brought both the keyboard and the special amplifier and loudspeaker seen in the photo from the concert. As she does when she performs Turangalila elsewhere in the world as ”the specialist in this work”. Not many people have mastered this special instrument, but she teaches it to others at the Paris Conservatoire.