classical music: Messian

classical music: Messian

classical music:

Messian

Catalogue D'Oseaux / La Fauvette Des Jardins

Messiaen, Ugorski

Deutsche Grammophon, 2003

Probably the definitive performance of this modern masterpiece and a tremendous bargain.
Those looking for a performance of Messiaen's Catalogue of Birds cannot do better than this one. First, a word about the music itself. Composed from late 1956 to early 1958, it is not exactly easy listening. Messiean's compositional style often does not use traditional ...

Olivier Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time

Jian Wang, Olivier Messiaen, ...

Deutsche Grammophon, 2001

The best I know.
Quatuor pour la fin du Temps is one of my favourite Messiaen's works, together with his Turangalila Symphonie, the Vingt Regards and his opera Saint Françoise. In all that pieces you can feel together with a great development of musical technique a great faith in the ...

Des Canyons Aux Etoiles

Messiaen, Oprf, ...

Deutsche Grammophon, 2003

Just Explore
Messiaen's Des canyons aux etoiles... is wonderful piece of music but is also a challenging one. You must be patience and attentive to every whisper, although I find myself swiftly hypnotized. Written for solo piano, horn, xylorimba, glockenspiel and large chamber ...

Olivier Messiaen: Turangalîla Symphony; L'ascension

Olivier Messiaen, Antoni Wit, ...

Naxos, 2000

Modern French Music
Olivier Messiaen, the great French modern composer, is here represented by two of his most famous compositions: the early four meditations on L'Ascension and, a composition written after he was released from a German prison camp, the Turangalila-Symphonie, a work of ...

Olivier Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time

Fred Sherry, Richard Stoltzman, ...

RCA, 1989

Imagining the end...
I wonder how many other masterpieces were in fact lost in prisoner or war camps. We shouldn't be listening to this work today. It should not have survived. Perhaps Messiaen should not have either. But he did, and it did, and we are lucky because of it. The ...

Olivier Messiaen

Messian, Boulez, ...

Naive, 2008

Inspirational Tribute
In honor of the 100th year of Olivier Messiaen's birth comes this six-disc set of some of his most groundbreaking and beautiful music. The protean composer was one of the 20th century's major visionaries as well as one of its most accessible artists, a claim few other ...

Olivier Messiaen: Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus

Olivier Messiaen, Pierre-Laurent Aimard

Teldec, 2000

Indescribably Beautiful
My concert-going days go back to hearing Artur Schnabel in 1947, and when I say that a recital I heard a year ago by Pierre-Laurent Aimard in which he played five of the 'Vingts Regards' is among the greatest musical experiences I've ever had, it is against that ...

Olivier Messiaen: Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum; Chronochromie; La Ville d'en haut

Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, ...

Deutsche Grammophon, 1995

Messiaen's vision, via Boulez and Cleveland
Oliver Messiaen was a pivotal, transitional figure in 20th century music, bridging the early Moderns and the post-war serialists. Boulez and Xenakis were both his students. His music is epic, clearly the product of a visionary. This is an essential disc of his work, ...

Olivier Messiaen: Turangalila-Symphonie

Olivier Messiaen, Myung-Whun Chung, ...

Deutsche Grammophon, 1992

Intoxicating
Don't let yourself be scared away if Boulez and Stravinsky don't and didn't appreciate this rhapsodic "symphony" - the history of art is full of such examples, Wolf/Brahms, Stravinsky/Schönberg, Tolstoy/Dostojevsky etc. etc. In terms of "absolute music" this doesn't ...

Olivier Messiaen: Turangalîla Symphony

Olivier Messiaen, Seiji Ozawa, ...

RCA, 2004

It's About Time
This has been the recording by which all Turangalila recordings have been judged since its original release more than 35 years ago. None have eclipsed it. Chung softens the edges, Previn hides the beauty. Nagano is good but the orchestra is dull while Wit would have ...