The Sanskrit word "Turangalîla" roughly means "dynamism" and "vitality" - Olivier Messiaen, expert on Indian rhythms, gave this gigantic opus this title and christened it "Hymn to Joy". The Nationaltheater-Orchester Mannheim is dedicated to this exuberance with general music director Alexander Soddy, who brings over a hundred musicians to the stage: among them the Turangalîla interpreters Tamara Stefanovich and Thomas Bloch. Crazy tempos, rhythms, keys: Messiaen's “love song” is a Dionysian sound frenzy that is second to none. A production by the Musikalische Akademie des Nationaltheater-Orchester Mannheim e.V. in cooperation with the Nationaltheater Mannheim.

MESSIAEN: Fauvette des jardins (La) / Offrandes oubliees (Le

While most listeners to 20th-century music and piano masterpieces will have recordings of Messiaen’s two major cycles in their collection, the rest of his piano music often tends to fly under the radar. Yet Messiaen wrote piano music throughout his life, and among his most characteristic early works is the set of eight Preludes, with their playful evocations of wind and air and dreams and light. The piano writing may owe much to Debussy’s example, but it’s clear that the 20-year-old composer was already well on its way to developing unique aspects of his language: the blue harmonies, the repetitions and the patient ascensions towards a state of ecstasy that make him among the most imitated of last century’s composers. From the middle period of Messiaen’s protean career, the Quatre études de rythme exercised lasting influence over the most brilliant composers of the avant-garde generation including Boulez and Stockhausen, though their application of the principles of ‘total serialism’ is much less dry and more vivid than countless later imitators. Ciro Longobardi’s album concludes with perhaps the composer’s single most technically challenging piano work, La fauvette des jardins. This half-hour portrait of the reed-warbler stands as an appendix to the Catalogue d’oiseaux, rarely encountered but a feat of coruscating virtuosity to set alongside the Transcendental Etudes of Liszt and the studies of Alkan and Godowsky. The Italian pianist Ciro Longobardi proved his mettle in Messiaen with a glowingly received album of the Catalogue d’oiseaux for Piano

Chiara Cipelli made a notable debut on Brilliant Classics in 2019 with the little-known music of Bruno Bettinelli. Now she turns her attention to the early works of Olivier Messiaen which are contemporary with much of Bettinelli’s piano music. Dating from 1929, the cycle of Eight Preludes finds Messiaen at his most impressionistic, with an opening, entrancing evocation of a dove that perhaps owes more to the spare language of Ravel in the ‘Oiseaux tristes’ of Miroirs than it does to his own, later and more extrovert transcriptions of birdsong. These Preludes strike a prevailing mood of reflection and calm, tending towards a French but uncharacteristic melancholy. Already in the second Prelude the 21-year-old Messiaen is trying out the effect of a visionary, aspiring melody over the top of a solemn chorale – the master organ improviser at a very early stage of development. The rarely encountered Pièce pour le tombeau de Paul Dukas strikes an even more sombre note, as a piece written by Messiaen in memory of his much-loved teacher of composition at the Paris Conservatoire. Here is a superb example of Messiaen’s chorale style, at once ecstatic and severe, at its most imposing and yet compressed (lasting only four minutes). Thereafter, Chiara Cipelli’s album strikes a more extrovert note, with the Fantaisie Burlesque of 1932 and a pair of the Quatre Etudes de Rythme with which the composer revolutionized his own language in the early 1950s and prefigured much avant-garde music by his pupils such as Boulez and Stockhausen, In the two Ile de feu studies, every aspect of composition is systematized according to a pre-arranged plan – not only notes in the 12-tone method devised by Schoenberg, but rhythms and even durations. Yet the results are much too stark and fiery to be confused with anyone but Messiaen. Chiara Cipelli ends her recital with a genuine rarity, the standalone Prelude which Messiaen wrote in 1964 but withheld, so that it only saw the light of day in 2000, eight years after his death.

Olivier Messiaen's two-hour, 20-movement piano solo cycle on the Observations of the Child Jesus was written in 1944 after the 'Quatuor pour la fin tu temps' and the 'Visions de l'Amen‘ for 2 pianos and has established itself as one of the most significant piano works of the 20th century. Great pianists such as Anton Batagov and Martin Helmchen have documented outstanding performances of this extremely versatile cycle of musical offerings on recordings. Pi-hsien Chen recorded Messiaen's magnum opus for piano live for the West German Radio (WDR) in Cologne in 2005, which impressively testifies to her exceptional status in the contemporary repertoire. Her Schonberg, Boulez, Barraque, Stockhausen and Cage recordings are of almost intimidating sovereignty, flawless pianistic brilliance and sublime structural clarity, and thus at least as legendary as her playing of Bach, Scarlatti, Mozart, Beethoven or Schubert. Born in Taiwan, the pianist has lived in Cologne since the age of nine and is praised by colleagues and the press for the sensual objectivity of her performances. After the 3-album-release with Schubert's 'Grandes Sonates', Aldila Records now presents her live cycle 'Vingt regards sur l'Enfant-Jesus', which is performed here with compelling authenticity and mastery. A living icon of modernity performs an immortal icon of modernity.

Magnificent! Antoni Wit's new recording of Messiaen's phantasmagoric Turangalila Symphony may lack the extreme orchestral virtuosity of versions by Previn, Chailly, or Salonen, but it beats them all in sheer musicality and fidelity to the composer's minutely specified instructions. Consider three quick examples. First, virtually all performances make a huge pause before the introduction of the "flower" theme, but Wit notices that Messiaen has indicated only a brief comma, or "breath pause". Second, all three alternative versions listed above play the finale at close to the tempo of the fifth movement "Joy of the Blood of the Stars", though Messiaen's designation for this movement is "Moderately, almost lively, with great joy." And that's exactly what we get here. Wit's slower tempo gives the piece the symphonic weight that it needs to conclude this great cycle of 10 movements, while the ability to take in all of its fantastic detail reduces the excitement not one bit--just the opposite, in fact. Finally, the way that Wit hangs onto that last luminous chord, with the percussion crescendo approaching the threshold of pain, proves that he understands the music's spirit as much as he strictly obeys the composer's instructions.


Following the score along with this performance is an incredible delight. Wit ensures that Messiaen's rhythms sound with exceptional clarity: the interplay of woodblock, maracas, cymbals, tambourine, drums, and chimes never has made more musical sense. He balances the textural complexities of the three "love song" movements, especially "Development of Love", with a supernatural sense of where the primary melodic threads lie. The fulsome, swooning, lyrical themes have just the right ecstatic intensity, the Ondes Martenot adding its characteristically sexy voice without undue spotlighting, thereby avoiding blatant vulgarity. And yet, as the Fifth movement clearly shows, Wit can whip up as big a frenzy as any of the competition, and his players respond with total commitment and a real sense of exhilaration. François Weigel, a student both of the composer and his wife, Yvonne Loriod, makes a splendid piano soloist, as technically secure and musically knowing as any.


The coupling is much more than a mere makeweight. Turangalila seems to have overtaken L'ascension as the composer's most popular work, but it's great to have a new version of this early masterpiece available in such idiomatic and secure hands. Once again, Wit offers a near-perfect performance, from the brightly toned trumpets of the third movement "Alléluia" to the serene string textures of the finale "Prayer of Christ Rising Towards His Father". The Naxos recording sounds very natural; anyone who has heard these works performed live will recognize immediately the realistic balances and faithfully captured tone colors. In sum, this set represents a tremendous achievement. Everyone concerned has done themselves proud.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time / Theme and Variations

Arkadiusz Bialic was born in 1976 in Kraków. Although he initially learned to play the piano and violin, at the age of 13, fascinated by the sound of the organ, he began learning to play this instrument. He studied music in Kraków under the guidance of Prof. Józef Serafin. Arkadiusz Bialic is the first Polish winner of the prestigious Grand Prix de Chartres. The cycle La Nativité du Seigneur was composed by Olivier Messiaen in 1935 and is still considered one of his key works. The Birth of the Saviour is a piece in which, on the one hand, we can observe a number of solutions that testify to the fully developed compositional craft of the French artist, on the other, it is one of the most fervent manifestations of Messiaen’s worship of Christ and the Christian religion.

Renowned French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard kicks off his exclusive engagement to PENTATONE with a recording of Olivier Messiaen’s Catalogue d’Oiseaux (1956-1958). The pianist had intimate ties to the composer himself and his wife, Yvonne Loriod, for whom Messiaen wrote the Catalogue.

Praised by The Guardian as “one of the best Messiaen interpreters around,“ this is Aimard’s first recording of Messiaen’s most extensive, demanding and colorful piano composition. The luxurious release set contains an accompanying bonus film, on which Aimard shares his vast knowledge of and love for Messiaen’s work from behind the piano.

Due to its radical naturalism, the Catalogue d’Oiseaux is exceptional within the repertoire for solo piano. It is the grand hymn to nature from a man who never ceased to marvel at the stupefying beauty of landscapes or the magic of bird song. With his Catalogue, Messiaen tried – in his own words – “to render exactly the typical birdsong of a region, surrounded by its neighbors from the same habitat, as well as the form of song at different hours of the day and night,” suggesting an almost scientific approach to his subjects. The idea of ‘reproduction’ may have been central to Messiaen’s conception of the Catalogue d’Oiseaux, but in the finished work we hear a great composer at work, a master of innovative structures who finds an astonishing range of piano sonorities. In a world that is increasingly being destructed by man, Aimard views this cycle as “a musical refuge that resonates with an audience ever more concerned, expanded and affected.”

REVIEWS:

Unsurprisingly, Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s interpretations are anything but tame. His dynamic range is formidable, his voicing of chords scrupulously faithful, his clarity unimpeachable. It’s hard to imagine the textures having greater impact or precision, or the continuity and discontinuity being projected with greater concentration. Nigel Simeone’s essay for Pentatone is exceptionally informative on factual background. One can only salute this outstanding achievement.

– Gramophone (Editor's Choice, April 2018)

Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s long association with Olivier Messiaen’s music dates back to the early 1970s, when the teenaged pianist was a protégée of both the composer and his wife Yvonne Loriod. His 2000 recording of Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus has long held sway as a version of reference. In August 2017 Aimard set down the complete Catalogue d’Oiseaux, now released by Pentatone on three SACDS, accompanied by informative booklet notes by Nigel Simone and a valuable DVD where Aimard presents succinct overviews of each piece from the piano and offers interesting insights into Messiaen’s methodology and personality.

As the set reveals time and again, Aimard has long digested and internalized Messiaen’s colorful keyboard syntax. The pianist voices and balances extended sequences of chords with the utmost clarity and specificity. Minute variations in rhythmic asymmetry are scrupulously articulated, while Aimard never shortchanges the music’s frequent moments of silence. He also brings impressive timbral and characterful variety to low-register passagework that can sound muddy or indistinct in the wrong hands. Cases in point include Messiaen’s playful evocation of mating mallards in Le Merle de roche’s opening pages, and Le Loriot’s slow-motion chords that contrast with lively high-register dialogues depicting Garden Warblers.

Le Rousserolle Effarvatte, the cycle’s epicenter and longest movement, emerges as a dramatic and virtuoso tour-de-force, showcasing Aimard’s remarkable concentration throughout sustained contemplative passages, along with his sophisticated gradations in dynamics and touch that seemingly project the gnarly, tumultuous sequences in three-dimensional perspective. To be sure, the pianist’s fortissimos convey an edgy, even metallic patina (so do Yvonne Loriod’s, in fairness), and his occasional vocal grimaces distract. Moreover, there sometimes is more humor to the music than Aimard is willing to concede.

Aimard’s technical, stylistic, and musical authority build upon Loriod’s interpretive legacy, and set modern-day standards that will both inspire and intimidate future generations of Messiaen pianists.

– ClassicsToday (Jed Distler)

Olivier Messiaen is one of the great composers of the 20th century and the Quartet for the End of Time is probably his most original and poignant chamber work. The piece as recorded on this release pushes all kinds of boundaries, first of all through its genesis in a concentration camp, through the unusual combination of the instruments, and then through the performance by Martin Fröst himself who is known for pushing musical & technical boundaries: "There is something approaching the supernatural about his command of his instrument” said The New York Times. Martin Fröst and Janine Jansen first met 16 years ago and the first piece they ever played together was the Quartet for the End of Time. Torleif Thedeen was also part of that group. This piece left them with a deep sense of connection. They just waited for the right time and circumstances to record it.

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REVIEW:

Although much recorded in the CD era, I can't recall another version that so persuasively favors the ferocity over the serenity. The ensemble probe the score for every hint of disquiet and unease but no one can doubt the relevance of the result. The booklet notes are excellent, as is the remarkably vivid and well-balanced recording.

– Gramophone

Saint François d'Assise is unique among operas. Decidedly anti-dramatic (there is little or no action), it fulfills Messiaen's aim to present the journey of St. Francis' soul toward grace. St Francis advises another monk, Brother Leon; he meets a leper, kisses and cures him; he encounters an angel; he preaches to the birds; he prays for and receives the Stigmata; he dies. The tempo, save for a few moments, remains stubbornly moderate; if you do not give in to this fact and wish for something else, you're lost.

The orchestral palette, however, takes the breath away, with close to 120 players, consisting of strings galore, huge wind and brass sections, and percussion (including woodblocks, drums, triangles, bells, xylophones, vibraphones, and the weird swooping sound of the electronic ondes martenot that always surprises). These sounds evoke birds, forest, ecstasy, the agony of the stigmata. Textures are always rich and fascinating and occasionally puzzling; by contrast, each word of the sung text is crystal clear.

For all its noise and strangeness, this is an opera that can make the listener feel that he's eavesdropping on someone's personal religious crisis, and I bet that's just what the composer wanted. Be wary of approaching it and be warned that given its introspective nature it sometimes can leave the listener very much alone. As a theatrical experience it does not engage: it's too slow and too internal. You may love it, you will admire it, but you won't listen to it a great deal.

I doubt that this Netherlands Opera production, directed by Pierre Audi, will be bettered. The orchestra is on stage, behind a pile of large, iron crosses; there's little to get in the way of the music's pageantry. It's almost a naïve approach and it works. Children sit around as Francis preaches to the birds, quietly. There's little lurching; movements are slow and natural. The moments of stasis seem correctly frozen in time and space. Fussing any further could ruin the peculiar balance; Audi knows when to back off, avoiding too much theatricality even in the grand moments. Jean Kalman's sets and lighting could not be more effective, the jagged crosses at once symbols of torture and blessedness, and TV director Misjel Vermeiren brings us very close to the Saint.

And his cast is superb. In the stunning audio-only recording under Kent Nagano (on DG--type Q618 in Search Reviews), the title role is sung with great austerity and beauty by José van Dam (he also sang it earlier for Seiji Ozawa); on this DVD, Rod Gilfry actually outperforms him. Playing a man who embraces nature, birds, and God with great passion translates subtly into physicality in this case. Gilfry is a good-looking guy with an innate sensuality: this humanness makes the piety tangible. He sings exquisitely and moves with great reserve and dignity. St Francis is on stage for most of the four-plus hours and Gilfry's appeal and concentration never flag.

The leper, as portrayed by Hubert Delamboye in an absurd black and yellow rubbery costume (better, I guess, than scabs and bumps and missing digits), is a tortured soul brought to peace by Francis; Hank Neven sings the uncertain Brother Leon with modesty. Audi presents the Angel simply--no fantastic flying around--and Camilla Tilling sings the role with utter simplicity and an aural peacefulness. Conductor Ingo Metzmacher knows that the story is in the instruments, and his superb orchestra can't be praised highly enough. The chorus also is spectacular.

Sound (5.0 DTS Surround/PCM Stereo) and picture (16:9) are ideal. Bonuses include synopsis and cast gallery, "The Children", "The Message", and "A Chamber Piece...Really", and are variably entertaining and important. Subtitles are in all major European languages and Dutch. This work never will be a repertory staple; it's an event. Messiaen fans will know that this DVD is more a necessity than a luxury; others will find plenty to fascinate them if they give it the requisite time, space, and concentration.

--Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com

Ten years after writing ‘Les Corps glorieux’ Olivier Messiaen developed a plan to compose a Book of Rhythmic Studies for the organ. This resulted in two distinct works of which ‘Livre d’orgue’ proved to be an anthology representative of his compositional thinking at the time. It runs the gamut of rhythms, tone colors and sonorities, ranging from extreme delicacy to the most powerful vehemence, and includes new modes, complex Hindu rhythms, and an aviary of birdsong. The test piece ‘Verset pour la fete de la Dedicace’ offers a more serene vision in its own essay in birdsong. Tom Winpenny is Assistant Master of the Music at St. Alban’s Cathedral, where he accompanies the daily choral services and directs the Abbey Girls’ Choir. Previously, he served as sub-organist at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. He is also musical director of the London Pro Arte Choir. Winpenny has broadcast frequently on BBC Radio and featured on American Public Media’s pipedreams. He was organ scholar at King’s College, Cambridge, graduating with a music degree, and twice accompanying the festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, broadcast worldwide.

Olivier Messiaen’s Meditations sur le Mystere de la Sainte Trinite grew out of improvisations that he performed at the inauguration of the rebuilt organ of La Trinite in 1967. It became his largest cycle to date and marks Messiaen’s first use of ‘communicable language,’ in which each letter of the alphabet is assigned a unique pitch and note value, thereby translating text into music. Haunting harmonies, awe-inspiring monumental grandeur and the deepest profundity of expression are contrasted by the innocence of birdsong with the recurrent call of the yellowhammer, a tranquil voice from nature amid kaleidoscopic Biblical themes.

The Catalogue d’Oiseaux of Olivier Messiaen forms an extraordinary and varied tribute to the landscape and bird-life of France, and to its composer’s powers of invention as he explored and developed innovations in harmony, melody and rhythm at a time when all the elements of music were in flux and up for grabs. The 13 compositions of the Catalogue are very different from one other, in length, form and intent. L’alouette lulu is a kind of antiphonal poem. La chouette hulotte boldly maps out territory for experimentation. Le chocard des alpes and Le buse variable are mostly articulated by shouts, where we are close to noise. The material is often raw and dissonant, but Messiaen often uses what are traditionally blocks of dissonance to create consonance. There are pieces full of melody – Le loriot or La bouscarle – and songs rich in timbre but not saturated with color like La merle de roche. He liked to convey the impression that he composed music in isolation from the world around him, inspired first and foremost by God and by the birds whom he called God’s musicians. The Italian pianist Ciro Longobardi has made a specialty of 20th and 21st-century music. He won a major piano prize at the crucible of European modernism in music, Darmstadt – only the second Italian pianist to do so – and he has given Italian premieres of significant works by the likes of Ives, Kurtág and Xenakis. With both an assured technique and a sympathetic grasp of the idioms of the great music of our own time, he is well placed to make an outstanding contribution to the rich history of the Catalogue d’Oiseaux on record.

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REVIEW:

Throughout the cycle Messiaen produces richly intricate music that should be listened to actively – do something else whilst you listen, and you miss out on aspects of the music. This is where Ciro Longobardi does well, his performance makes you listen, through its 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. It is a long time since I listened to Yvonne Loriod’s recording of the Catalogue d’Oiseaux, so I cannot make a comparison with the premiere artist. However, in comparison with the recording of Anatol Ugorski for DG (474 3452), this somewhat quicker interpretation stands up well, with Ugorski sounding a little too relaxed now, especially when compared with the wonderful performance of Pierre-Laurent Aimard (PTC5186670). For me personally, Aimard would be my preferred recording, he has the knack of sounding relaxed even when the music is not, but this new performance from Longobardi is not far behind, he is confident in the more challenging parts whilst as already stated his use of dynamics in the slower, quieter passages, as well as his adherence to the silences is excellent. The recorded piano sound is very good, whilst the booklet notes set the scene well, making this a worthy alternative to the Pierre-Laurent Aimard recording.

– MusicWeb International