Search - Olivier Messiaen, Recorded Sound, Pierre Boulez :: Olivier Messiaen: Sept Haïkaï, Couleurs de la cité céleste; etc.

A live recording of four Messiaen works with performers clos

Christopher Culver | 10/30/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This Naive reissue is a recording of the 80th birthday concert for Olivier Messiaen in Paris on November 26, 1988. Pierre Boulez led the Ensemble Intercontemporain in four pieces for piano and orchestra, with the composer's wife and virtuoso pianist Yvonne Loriod as soloist.



For me the highlight of this concert is "Oiseaux exotiques" (1956). While Messiaen had introduced birdsong into his music before with "Reveil des oiseaux", that piece had only attempted to replicate the very sound of the birds' dawn chorus. In "Oiseaux exotiques", however, he attempts to sculpt a wholly original soundworld using birdsong as musical material, and the results are enchanting. The solo piano part here stands out much more than in the other works, and one could even see it as a sort of concerto. If you have some musical training and want to learn more about the genesis and structure of the piece, I can recommend the guide of Hill and Simeone, Olivier Messiaen: Oiseaux exotiques.



"Sept Haikai" (1962) was written after a visit to Japan and stands as one of the most remarkable pieces of Messiaen's birdsong-era output. The French composer built himself up a very unique soundworld and admitted little influence from his colleagues in contemporary composition, but his trip to Japan broke into his work dramatically. Messiaen's sense of rhythm as a succession of blocks is here tempered by supple rhythms that seem to strain periodicity. "Couleurs de la Cite celeste" (1963) is scored for the unusual combination of piano, 3 clarinets, 3 xylophones, brass, and percussion. It seems in some respects an exploration of the same sonorities as is his massive work "Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum" of the same time, with its solemn progression of timbres and inspiration from the book of Revelation.



Sadly, by the time of "Un vitrail et des oiseaux" for piano solo, brass, wind and percussion (1986), Messiaen's music had greatly stagnated. In this collection of stock gestures, there's nothing he wasn't doing over two decades earlier in "Chronochromie", and long portions from it are indistinguishable from other orchestral pieces of the 1970s and 1980s.



As this is a live recording, there is a little coughing and the flatness of radio broadcast-sound, but in general it sounds fine. The most informative portion of the liner notes are unfortunately in French without English translation. I can see this disc as appealing especially to established fans of Messiaen's work who want to hear these pieces performed by Yvonne Loriod and conducted by Pierre Boulez."