Jean-Guihen Queyras / Pierre-Laurent Aimard / Isabelle Faust / Jörg Widmann OLIVIER MESSIAEN Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Video)

QUATUOR POUR LA FIN DU TEMPS

Louise Alder / Joseph Middleton CHÈRE NUIT

 

CHÈRE NUIT

Richard Lester FRENCH BONBONS

 

FRENCH BONBONS

Tamara Stefanovich / Thomas Bloch / Nationaltheater-Orchester Mannheim / Alexander Soddy MESSIAEN Turangalîla-Symphonie

TURANGALÎLA-SYMPHONIE

 

Gyða Valtýsdóttir EPICYCLE

EPICYCLE

Arkadiusz Bialic OLIVIER MESSIAEN La Nativité du Seigneur

LA NATIVITÉ DU SEIGNEUR

Estellés / Iturriagagoitia / Apellániz / Rosado FIN DU TEMPS

FIN DU TEMPS

Anna Prohaska / Julius Drake PARADISE LOST

                                                                PARADISE LOST

Mischa Maisky / Lily Maisky 20TH CENTURY CLASSICS

                                                         20TH CENTURY CLASSICS

Apartment House OLIVIER MESSIAEN Quatuor pour la fin du temps LINDA CATLIN SMITH Among the Tarnished Stars

The UK ensemble Apartment House performs two works: Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du Temps in six movements, and Linda Catlin Smith's Among the Tarnished Stars, taking a fresh modern approach to the Messiaen, drawing out its experimental character, and the sense of drama and intricate gradations of sonority in Smith's rich and mysterious work.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard OLIVIER MESSIAEN Catalogue d’Oiseaux

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 colourful piano composition. The luxurious CD box set contains an accompanying bonus DVD, 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 neighbours 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 destroyed by man, Aimard views this cycle as “a musical refuge that resonates with an audience ever more concerned, expanded and affected.”

Tamara Stefanovich INFLUENCES

On her first PENTATONE album, Tamara Stefanovich presents a highly personal selection of solo works by Bach, Bartók, Ives and Messiaen. “Influences” shows how these extraordinarily original and idiosyncratic composers let themselves be inspired by the exterior world, thereby demonstrating how authenticity comes from looking outside as well as inside. The repertoire spans from Bach’s embrace of Italian musical elements in his Aria variata alla maniera italiana, Bartók’s incorporation of folk elements in his Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs, and Messiaen’s use of Hindu rhythms in Cantéyodjayâ to the collage of marching bands, sounds of trains and machinery, church hymns, ragtime and blues in Ives’ first piano sonata. In all cases, the exterior influences lead to deeply original and personal sonic galaxies. In that respect, the pieces presented here underline how identity results from a constant dialogue with our surroundings, ever changing and enriching our perceptions of ourselves and the world.

Duo Zuber BLACKBIRD REDUX

Patricia Wolf Zuber and Greg Zuber, a husband and wife duo, have been exploring and expanding the flute and marimba duo repertoire for over thirty years. They are passionate about this music, having played countless pieces for this combination and commissioning and arranging over 30 works. They are both winners of numerous Grammy Awards for their performances with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra of New York, Patricia as an Associate Flutist and Greg as Principal Percussionist, a position he has held for more than 25 years.

We have been performing together since we first met in college. Along with busy careers based in New York City, at the Metropolitan Opera, on Broadway, and with other prestigious ensembles, we have continued our duo performances, building repertoire with newly discovered works, commissioned pieces, and adapted and arranged music.

We take inspiration from genius composers whose vocation is to translate ideas of life into form and sound. Our passion has been to present the most inspired, stylish, intelligent, expressive works from which to craft our programs.

We hope this album, with works created over a 60 year span, entertains and inspires listeners everywhere. - Patricia and Greg Zuber

Yutaka Sado / Tonkünstler Orchester OLIVIER MESSIAEN Turangalîla

The composer Olivier Messiaen’s approximate definition of the ancient Indian word «Turangalîla» was «at once love song, hymn to joy, time, movement, rhythm, life and death». He was a mystic of ecstasy, who could hear colours and see sounds; an ornithologist who set birds’ songs of praise to music; an avant-garde pioneer who was the first to make serial music possible; a Catholic inspired by unshakeable faith; a gifted teacher – and his works dazzle just like his artistic personality. This connects him with Leonard Bernstein, the lodestar of the Tonkunstler Orchestra in 2017-18. What more powerful and thrilling opening to the season, then, than Messiaen’s «Turangalîla» Symphony, whose premiere Bernstein conducted in Boston in 1949? Music Director Yutaka Sado, once Bernstein’s student, and the Tonkunstler Orchestra will stage this monumental love song, one of the most important as well as popular works of the 20th century, a hymn to music and the loving human heart.

Vox Clamantis / Jaan-Eik Tulve SACRUM CONVIVIUM

‘Sacrum Convivium’ presents a vision of French music over two millennia: from Gregorian chant through Guillaume de Machaut’s extraordinary ‘Lai de Nostre Dame’ to the Twentieth Century of Maurice Duruflé, Francis Poulenc and Olivier Messiaen, all three of them influenced in some way by the spirituality and sensibility of Gregorian chant, which Messiaen himself described as “the greatest treasure we possess in western music.”

Yukyeong Ji REFLECTIONS

The young pianist Yukeong Ji has already had an impressive career. However, despite all the prizes and hymns of praise from the critics, she does not lose her footing. Her debut CD, featuring extremely rare repertoire by Uzong Choe, Toru Takemitsu, Bertold Hummel, Maurice Ravel and Olivier Messiaen, proves this. These are fascinating reflections in music, shedding new light on the works. Yukeong Ji plays crystal clear and with broad phrases. She breathes life into sophisticated literature and captivates the listener.

Duo Gazzana RAVEL - FRANCK - LIGETI - MESSIAEN

The third ECM New Series recording by Italian sisters Natascia and Raffaella Gazzana focuses primarily on French music, by César Franck, Maurice Ravel and Olivier Messiaen, and also pays tribute to Hungary’s György Ligeti, with a premiere recording of his Duo for violin and piano.

Where 20th and 21st century music was explored on their two previous discs – the first with music of Takemitsu, Hindemith, Janáček and Silvestrov and the second with Poulenc, Walton, Dallapiccola, Schnittke and, again, Silvestrov – this time Duo Gazzana also reaches back a little further in music history. The album begins with two pieces composed at the end of the 19th century, Ravel’s Sonate posthume, written in 1897, and César Franck’s monumental A-major Sonata for piano and violin of 1886.

“If you speak of French music, the first association is probably with music where atmosphere and mood are emphasized,” the Gazzana sisters note. “But the Franck sonata is something really solid as well as beautiful, and it has influenced so many other composers.” As Wolfgang Sandner remarks in the CD booklet essay, “The sonata is a test of interpretation. In particular, it requires a command of its architecture, built through successive cycles, of its expressive intensity, product of a formal clarity maintained through harmonic boldness, enharmonic ambiguities and modulations to distant keys, and not least the dialogue that develops between the two instruments.”

Studying and playing the Franck sonata was Duo Gazzana’s starting point for the repertoire of the present disc. “And then we tried, as we always do in our programmes, to find links and interconnections, musically and historically.”

Three of the featured pieces are early works. Maurice Ravel was just 22 when he wrote the Sonata posthume (which remained unpublished until 1975), Olivier Messiaen composed his Thème et variations at 24, and György Ligeti wrote his Duo (dedicated to his good friend György Kurtág) aged 23. The Gazzana sisters, who gave eloquent voice to early William Walton on their last ECM album, are fascinated by the transitional character and the promise of such pieces: “In them, you can already hear and sense the next steps that these composers will make in their musical language.” Early potential is also embodied in the Franck A major sonata: completed when its author was in his mid-60s, it was built upon a work he had sketched some three decades earlier.

The Franck, Ravel and Messiaen pieces reflect upon their authors’ close relationships with great violinists. Franck dedicated his sonata to a fellow composer, the virtuoso violinist Eugène Ysaӱe. Ravel’s 1897 sonata is said to have been inspired by the playing of his friend George Enescu, when both musicians were members of Fauré’s composition class in Paris. And Messiaen’s Thème et variations is dedicated to his first wife Claire Delbos, who gave the premiere performance. The profound keyboard skills of César Franck and Olivier Messiaen are however not to be gainsaid, and both had reputations as outstanding organists and improvisers. Raffaella Gazzana: “In some of the demanding counterpoint of the 4th movement of his sonata, especially, one can imagine Franck thinking also of the foot pedals of the organ.”

Messiaen and Ligeti were universes unto themselves: “Neither of them can really be classified in terms of any school.” Regarding the inclusion of the György Ligeti piece here, the duo says, “we like Ligeti’s music very much, but he didn’t publish music for our instrumentation. After doing some research we found a mention of the early Duo, and went in search of the piece.” In contradistinction to the Franck piece, where any new interpretation must take into account many distinguished recorded performances, “it was interesting and challenging to play the Ligeti with no other reference than the notes on the newly-printed Schott score.”

Paul Griffiths’s commentary on Duo Gazzana’s 2011 debut can serve equally as a summary here: “The programme as a whole is typical of the duo’s inquiring and sensitive approach to repertory. What we hear here is a vital freshness.”

Like its predecessors, the album was recorded at Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, and produced by Manfred Eicher. (ECM Records)

Arsys Bourgogne / Mihály Zeke NAISSANCE DE VÉNUS

Directed by the young conductor Mihály Zeke, Arsys Bourgogne is a vocal ensemble whose mission is to perform everything from early choral music to contemporary compositions. Founded in 1999 by Pierre Cao, who conducted the ensemble for 15 years, Arsys Bourgogne has a rich history filled with quality and excellence. The ensemble is comprised of 8 to 16 singers and takes on six centuries of a cappella vocal repertoire as well as choral works with orchestra.

Since taking on the artistic direction in 2015, Mihály Zeke has brought Arsys Bourgogne into new and original choral music experiences. He is interested in forging links between Early and New music by creating strong relationships with today’s composers, such as Alexandros Markeas and Benoît Menut.

From Claudio Monteverdi to Olivier Messiaen, through Johann Sebastian Bach Giacinto Scelsi and Philippe Hersant, Arsys Bourgogne’s programs showcase composers from different eras in order to bring a new sense of meaning to each work. The ensemble also proposes new multidisciplinary programs that have elements of dramaturgy and staging.

Arsys Bourgogne embarks on a journey through the landscape of secular French 20th century choral music with Naissance de Vénus, a recording featuring emblematic repertoire such as the Trois chansons by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, Un soir de neige by Francis Poulenc, as well as the Cinq rechants by Olivier Messiaen. Lesser known jewels, such as Joseph Canteloube’s Chants paysans, Darius Mihaud’s Naissance de Vénus and the virtuosic À contre-voix by Florent Schmitt round out this fine collection of French a cappella works.

David Krakauer / Matt Haimovitz & Friends AKOKA

In their “brilliantly inventive” (The New York Times) live recording, clarinetist David Krakauer and cellist Matt Haimovitz’s AKOKA lift Messiaen's transcendent 1940-41 work Quartet for the End of Time out of the polite context of a chamber music performance, placing it in a dramatic 21st century setting that drives home its gravity and impact. AKOKA was inspired by the wartime experience of Jewish clarinetist Henri Akoka, who premiered the Quartet for the End of Time with Messiaen himself at the German prisoner-of-war camp in which they were both interred. Henri Akoka's vibrant personality and the story of his survival, with all its twists and turns, is the inspiration for this recording, which brings out the human aspect of this composition, seen through the eyes of one individual caught up in terrifying events beyond his control. Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time is bookended by Akoka, Krakauer’s highly improvisational, Sephardic-tinged piece, and Meanwhile… a re-mix by hip-hop/klezmer artist Socalled, who joins the ensemble on electronics. As the forces of fundamentalism, intolerance and violence intensify in today's world, this mounting of Messiaen’s great work is all the more timely.

Martin Fröst / Lucas Debargue / Janine Jansen / Torleif Thedéen MESSIAEN Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps

The Quartet for the End of Time is intensely personal music and it deserves an equally personal response from anyone playing it now. When Martin Fröst overheard a rehearsal through an open window as a teenager at a music camp, he was transfixed: ‘I was bewitched … and I ended up walking away from the house that day with a different view on the world.’

It was the first work he played with Janine Jansen when they met 16 years ago and the cellist on that occasion was Thorleif Thedéen. This was a transforming experience for all three musicians. Martin Fröst remembers it as ‘one of life’s rare and profound musical moments, when everything comes together and you are left with a deep sense of connection not only to the piece, but to each other – we have been trying to find the right circumstances to record the piece together ever since.’

Finally, these musicians have brought this cherished project to fruition, joined by the brilliant pianist Lucas Debargue. The deep expressive power of the Quartet was brought home to them once again – and the time was right too: ‘As the world has been marking and reflecting upon the several anniversaries of the World Wars in recent years, it felt that now was the perfect time to get this project off the ground, especially too as I feel the music, is still as relevant in today’s political climate as it was in 1941.’