Hommage a Messiaen: 8 Preludes; Selection from: Quatre Etudes de rythme

Product Description The centenary of Olivier Messiaen's birth provides an occasion for surveying his place in the landscape of musical creation. This recording, which brings together some relatively neglected pieces from his abundant output, represents both an act of homage to the composer and a reflection on the special position his works occupy in 20th-century music. In three segments, it presents compositions of three different types, each written at a difficult time in his life and emphasizing the fundamental role of the piano in his oeuvre. The Préludes are among Messiaen's earliest pieces, written in 1928-29, when he was 20 and still a student at the Paris Conservatoire. Later he described them as a "collection of successive states of mind and personal feelings". All eight were composed under the shock of the death of his mother, the poet Cécile Sauvage. She is "the dove" of "La Colombe", while the heart-rending "Cloches d'angoisse et larmes d'adieu" gives us an idea of the traumatic effect of her death on so gentle and sensitive a youth. Pieces dealing with grief and mourning are contrasted with others of great luminosity. Thus the "Chant d'extase", placed at the heart of this sombre landscape, allows us a foretaste of the luminous grace of some of the Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jésus. The cascading gems of "Les Sons impalpables du rêve" cast a musical spell entirely worthy of the finest works of the 1930s. Messiaen ends his cycle with "Un Reflet dans le vent", a piece that is by turns angry and lyrical. This may be a lesson in optimism on the part of a man of faith who was capable of turning to the light in the blackest of all possible circumstances (an ability also manifested in his Quatuor pour la fin du temps, written in a prisoner-of-war camp). But it could also be an expression of the hope awoken in him by the work's dedicatee, the pianist Henriette Roget, with whom he was in love. The surreal titles of some of these Préludes adumbrate texts that the composer - who had a fondness for the poetry of Paul Éluard - would later write and set to music, especially those of his song cycle Harawi. But what is most impressive about them is the world of colour they inhabit, a world both highly personal and already strongly defined. Each piece involves detailed associations between sound and colour. According to the composer, the fifth Prélude is "polymodal, superimposing an orange-blue ostinato on chordal cascades in a violet-purple mode that is invested with the timbre of a brass instrument". But it is in "Cloches d'angoisse et larmes d'adieu", the masterpiece of the cycle, that the composer most fully discloses his individual treatment of sonority. As Messiaen himself explains: "The bell-like sound combines many modes; the deep resonant tone of the bells and all their high harmonics resolve into luminous vibrations." His subtle use of resonance, inviting us to listen "inside" the bells, turned him into a prophet for generations to come, particularly the composers of spectral music. The composer's passion for nature and birdsong finally became omnipresent in the 1950s, resulting in a series of naturalist works that illustrate two of the more remarkable qualities of Messiaen as man and artist: his exceptional listening powers and his bound¬less capacity for astonishment. The precision and fidelity of his birdsong transcriptions reveal both his amazing ear and his tremendous concern for detail. But as a source of inspiration, this new-found interest also allowed him to escape from the anguish of a life overshadowed first by terrible illness and then by the death of his wife, the violinist Claire Delbos. It is interesting to see this radical move within the wider context of a period marked by other musical aesthetics and languages as well as by techniques that repre¬sented a break with the past. Messiaen made a point of keeping abreast of the work of the younger generation of avant-garde composers, and he himself made an entirely fresh start by writing whole pieces made up of completely new material having no historical point of reference: this was the birdsong that he transcribed systematically. His first "manifesto" was Réveil des oiseaux for piano and orchestra (1953), which is made up entirely of birdsong. By the end of the 1950s, this radicalism, coupled with his love of systemization, had led him to write the vast Catalogue d'oiseaux for piano solo (1956-58), from which two excerpts are included here. "La Bouscarle" (Cetti's Warbler) presents a great variety of birdcalls and suggests a miniature piece of ornithological theatre. The characterization of each call recalls how Messiaen, some years earlier, had defined the dimensions of his musical vocabulary by "individualizing" every sound in a different way. Here each bird has its own timbre, its own speed, its own distinctive musical behaviour. Although written while Messiaen was recovering from a serious illness, the piece still has a great sense of
ASIN: B001EUB6RG
VSKU: DBV.B001EUB6RG.A
Condition: Acceptable
Author/Artist:Olivier Messiaen|Pierre-Laurent Aimard
Binding: Audio cd
Note: Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.
Condition Notes: Individually inspected: Guaranteed to play perfectly or your money back. Case will show wear, and may be in library packaging. Ships fast!