The music of Messiaen seductive. It delights the senses and challenges the mind, emoting both peaceful and violent emotions. It dissolves time into a floating...

The music of Messiaen seductive. It delights the senses and challenges the mind, emoting both peaceful and violent emotions. It dissolves time into a floating state and creates a multidimensional space of subtle sounds and harmonic colours. The music of Messiaen encompasses great contrasts, from luscious harmonies to harsh cacophonic effects. Simple melodies stand side by side with complex music in many layers. His music possesses delicate nuances and provocative clashes, integrating tones that rise to extreme heights and fall to bottomless depths. Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) innovated Western European music through his inventions of new scales, rhythms and harmonies, as well as experiments aimed at assigning precise characteristic features to each single tone. As a professor at the Paris Conservatoire, he was of paramount importance to several generations of 20th Century composers. On this release, his music is performed beautifully by the young Northern Light Ensemble from Denmark.