Discovering Messiaen

Many of you may already know and love the music of Olivier Messiaen, but if not I thought I'd put up a brief introduction to this composer's amazing work and unique compositional voice.  I also thought I'd exploit Youtube a little bit, to show far-ranging the site's content is.

A terrific short introduction to Turangalîla-Symphonie from the Philharmonia of London, discussing the premiere of this magnificent, gargantuan blast of ecstasy-through-music:

More background: Esa-Pekka Salonen discusses Messiaen.

Messiaen himself discussing Debussy and color to a class gathered around the piano.

A fun short video of Messiaen pondering choices of organ stops before commencing an improvisation.

And finally, some performances of the first half of Turangalîla-Symphonie (couldn't find all of it...so I guess this post points up shortcomings of Youtube, too!).  It's a mix of different performances, but all of them give a real sense of the riveting immensity of this piece:

Movement I: Introduction.  National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (!) conducted by Andrew Davis.

Mvt. II: Chant d'amour 1.  Symphony Orchestra della Scala, Riccardo Chailly, conductor.

Mvt. III: Turangalîla 1.  Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Myung-Whun Chung, conductor.

Mvt. IV: Chant d'amour 2.  Part 1.  Part 2.  Chailly and Thibaudet again.

Mvt. V: Joie du sang des etoiles.  Davis and the youths again.  (This movement is EPIC--if you only watch one clip, make it this one.  But you should watch them all.)

I thought about including all sorts of other information and discussion, but this music especially needs to speak for itself--his voice is so unique and unexpected, you really have to just listen to it first.  If it grabs you, well, you're online: follow your curiosity!

Comments

[Jami]

Santa Rosa Symphony is doing parts of Turangalila in May. I'm excited to see the ondes Martenot in action!