The third volume Ciro Longobardi's Messiaen, after the universal critical success of Volumes 1 & 2, focusing on the composer's best-loved piano cycle. With his Piano Classics collection of the Preludes, Quatre etudes de rythme, La fauvette des jardins and other shorter works, Ciro Longobardi announced himself as a Messiaen pianist of remarkable imagination and accomplishment. The critics duly took note: 'Longobardi showcases tremendous technical skill and an exceptional attentiveness. This album is a lush, intricate success-meaningful for Messiaen enthusiasts and enjoyable for those new to his work. I highly recommend it.' (Fanfare). The Catalogue d'oiseaux continued to attract superlatives: 'Hs performance makes you listen, through it's diverse use of dynamics and the expert use of silences. His playing is concise and bright and is best listened to with the accompanying booklet, in which his notes on the music expertly set the scene.' (MusicWeb International). Now the Italian pianist turns to the Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jesus in which Messiaen most successfully synthesised a Lisztian tradition of virtuosity and tone-painting on the piano with his own spiritual and musical preoccupations: Catholic devotion, birdsong and Indian rhythmic syntax among them. Messiaen had lately completed what became a 'Tristan' trilogy of works including the Turangalila Symphony when, in 1948, he was commissioned by French radio to write pieces to accompany a broadcast of Christmas-themed poetry. The commission quickly outgrew it's original purpose, and Messiaen instead created a thematically unified cycle of pieces taking in contemplations of monumental reverence, jazz-inflected improvisations, fabulously intricate toccatas and more. At the heart of Vingt Regards lies the ineffable tenderness of the kiss bestowed on the sleeping infant by his mother in the most famous piece of the cycle, Le baiser de l'enfant Jesus. As a generous pairing, Ciro Longobardi also includes the 1985 cycle of piano miniatures, Petites Esquisses d'Oiseaux, which distil his lifelong love of birdsong into six exquisite portraits. These, like the Vingt Regards, are dedicated to his wife, the pianist Yvonne Loriod, who inspired his piano writing throughout his mature career, bringing a cyclical unity of it's own to the album.

Named a Concerto Choice in BBC Music Magazine September 2022!

The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and its Music and Artistic Director Jonathan Nott continue their acclaimed series of 20th-century masterpieces on PENTATONE, together with star pianist Francesco Piemontesi, presenting piano concertos by Ravel and Schoenberg alongside Messiaen’s Oiseaux exotiques. Each of these composers redefined 20th-century music in a highly personal way, and the works recorded here share a connection to the United States which one would perhaps not expect right away from these European master composers. While Ravel and Schoenberg’s piano concertos provide the most original and colourful 20th-century contributions to this genre, Messiaen employs a similar scoring to express his profound reverence for nature in Oiseaux exotiques. These challenging and multifarious scores fit Piemontesi, Nott and the orchestra like a glove.

Francesco Piemontesi is among the most-cherished pianists of our age, and presents the third fruit of his exclusive collaboration with PENTATONE, having released the acclaimed Schubert - Last Piano Sonatas (2019) and Bach Nostalghia (2021). The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande is one of the world’s most respected orchestras with a vast PENTATONE discography. This is their third release on the label with their Music and Artistic Director Jonathan Nott, after Strauss, Debussy & Ligeti (2018) and the gloriously received Debussy & Schoenberg,Conductor:Pelléas et Mélisande (2021), containing Nott’s new arrangement of Debussy’s opera.

REVIEWS:

Francesco Piemontesi’s musicianship is both deft and searching. Here are stellar interpretations of three very different concerto-type works, ordered into a journey from easier listening to more difficult.

You have to envy the citizens of Geneva, regularly able to hear music-making on this level from their resident orchestra and conductor. Add a pianist in Francesco Piemontesi’s class, and here are stellar interpretations of three very different concerto-type works, ordered into a journey from easier listening to (notionally at least) more difficult.

Ravel was so determined to avoid portentousness in his winsome G major Piano Concerto the first work heard on the disc — that it can easily sound trite in performance. Any such risk vanishes in the presence of Piemontesi’s brand of musicianship, which is at once deft and searching; a special moment is the sequence of trills decorating the melody in the first movement’s cadenza, marvellously judged to sound as if the notes are somehow gliding, rather than stepping from one to the next.

Without any compromising sense of a soft- focus paraphrase, the music is nonetheless delivered with a sureness of touch and purpose that absorbs and, as often as not, beguiles the ear.

--BBC Music (Malcolm Hayes)

The masterpiece 'beyond Time' that is the Quatuor pour la fin du Temps first saw the light of day in Barrack 27 of the World War II prisoner-of-war camp Stalag VIII-A in Gorlitz, Silesia, performed by it's composer Olivier Messiaen on piano along with fellow prisoners Jean Le Boulaire on violin, Henri Akoka on clarinet and etienne Pasquier on cello. The unusual ensemble forces were dictated by what musicians were available in that environment of deprivation, and the prisoners' coping mechanisms in response to it played a part: Akoka's clarinet and the singing of birds during dawn watches with Pasquier inspired the 3rd movement, Ab�me des oiseaux for solo clarinet. As Messiaen himself explained before the concert, it is the first six verses of the Book of Revelation Chapter 10 that inform the piece as a whole. Starvation in the camp had provoked in him vivid, colourful dreams of the Angel's Rainbow, and the End of Time represented eternity in the face of the mortality confronting the internees. The sensory deprivation he experienced while imprisoned caused (or exacerbated) his synaesthesia, such that his hearing of harmonies and his vision of colours became blended in his mind. The work's difficulty is well known; in Gorlitz, from musicians already unbalanced by Messiaen's unconventional rhythms, the composer demanded extreme and unusual instrumental effects: dynamic extremes, unheard-of force and maximum precision. Clarinettist Akoka complained about overly high notes and long phrases; violinist Le Boulaire about wide, inhumanly slow string melodies. But Messiaen's serenity at the piano instilled confidence, making the impossible possible and raising everything to a higher level. On a formal level, the eight movements of the Quatuor, linked by symbolic correspondences, reflect the biblical perfection of the number seven: the six days of Creation followed by the day of Rest, which is prolonged into Eternity becoming an eighth of indefectible light and unalterable peace. 'I composed this quartet to escape from snow, from war, from imprisonment and from myself,' Messiaen said. But the religious silence that enveloped the premiere demonstrated the Quatuor's ability to raise everyone in it's first audience along with him, above the barbarity, hunger and cold. Today, hearing this music that is 'alien to earthly beauty and pervaded by the idea of God', we perceive it's essence 'beyond Time', imbued with faith and religiosity. Other information: - Recorded February 2018, February 2019 and December 2023 in Perugia - Booklet in English contains liner notes by Donatella Meneghini and biographical information on the artists - Italian liner notes available at brilliantclassics. Com - Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) composed his Quatuor pour le fin du temps" (Quartet for the End of Time) 1940-41. The work was written during Messiaen's internment at Stalag VIII-A, a German prisoner-of-war camp, where he was held during World War II. Despite the harsh conditions, Messiaen composed this eight-movement piece for a unique ensemble: clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, which were the instruments available in the camp. - Inspired by the biblical Book of Revelation, particularly the angel's proclamation of the end of time, the Quatuor explores themes of eternity, divine grace, and apocalyptic vision. Messiaen, a devout Catholic, saw time as transcended by divine love, and the piece reflects his fascination with spiritual and mystical concepts. - The music is known for it's otherworldly beauty, complex rhythms, and innovative use of modes of limited transposition, which create a timeless, suspended feeling. The movements range from intense, fiery expressions of divine might to serene, meditative reflections on eternity. Premiered within the camp before an audience of prisoners and guards, Quatuor pour le fin du temps remains one of the most important and profound chamber works of the 20th century. - Played by Davide Bandieri, Francois Sochard, Joel Marosi and Maria-Liisa Marosi. - Davide Bandieri has already successfully released numerous recordings for Brilliant Classics, including the Complete Chamber Music Works for Clarinet by Von Weber (BC 95531) and, together with Joel Marosi and Maria-Liisa Marosi, Clarinet Trios by Fruhling and Zemlinsky (BC 95394).

The Quatuor pour la fin du temps counts as one of the harrowing musicals heritages of a horrible past history. Messiaen wrote it in 1941 while caught in a German concentration camp, and based the work on resources available. The work, which is more than 50 minutes in length, is a maximum condense on a harrowing musician’s thoughts, composed under psychological pressure, distress and horror, and also out of pure despair. The piece counts as one of the most difficult musical works to play; it needs an enormous amount of concentration and psychological power. “The work,” as Messiaen writes, “is directly inspired by the Revelation of St. John. Its musical language is essentially transcendental, spiritual, catholic. Certain modes, realizing a kind of tonal ubiquity in terms of harmony and melody, draw the listener into a sense of the eternity of space or time. Special rhythms, lying outside any sort of measure, contribute significantly toward the banishment of the concept of time.”

Stradivarius is pleased to present Premi�re by Julija Sadaunykait�, Lithuanian pianist and winner of the Grand Prix at the Malta Valletta International Piano Competition. This album, marking Julija Sadaunykait�'s recording debut, takes listeners on an intimate journey into the musical world of this pianist, celebrated for her expressive depth and refined artistry. A listening journey through different creative worlds unfolds through celebrated pages of piano literature, with the performer intent on delving into the depths of the scores and capturing their extraordinary compositional textures. The album opens with Maurice Ravel's Miroirs No. 5: La vall�e des cloches, the last movement of the Miroirs cycle, a five-movement suite for piano composed between 1904 and 1905. The opening piece, which Ravel dedicated to the French pianist and composer Maurice Delage, is followed by Olivier Messiaen's Premi�re communion de la Vierge from Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-J�sus, one of the most famous works for solo piano in the contemporary repertoire, and Robert Schumann's Sonata No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 11, composed between 1833 and 1836 and dedicated to Clara Wieck. This intense journey into the musical world of Julija Sadaunykait� concludes with Sonata No. 1 by Australian composer Carl Vine, born in 1954. According to the first printed edition, the work was composed for the Sydney Dance Company and is characterized by energetic rhythms, unusual harmonic shifts, abrupt tempo changes, dynamic contrasts, and rich textures, all of which allow performers to fully explore their technical and emotional range.

Lars Vogt (1970-2022) early recordings collected here provide a document of an artist who always remained authentic, both to himself and to music. Lars Vogt never sought absolute truth, but truthfulness instead meant all the more to him. The man and the artist were always very close, never currying favour and never detached from the world. He was, instead, open and natural. "It's incredibly gratifying when you notice that you can perhaps light a little spark, a little flame for music in people, and when music helps you to find the path to your own soul."

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

MESSIAEN: Preludes / 4 Rhythmic Studies / Canteyodjaya