大象传媒

Donald Macleod journeys through Olivier Messiaen's Peruvian inspired compositions

Olivier Messiaen was the single most important contributor to the organ repertoire in the twentieth century. He took up learning the organ whilst he was a student in Paris, and was fortunate to hear virtuoso organists around the city including Louis Vierne, Charles Tournemire, Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupr茅. Aged just twenty-two, he succeeded Charles Quef as titular organist at the Sainte-Trinit茅 in Paris. Messiaen remained in this post for over sixty years, composing many solo works for the organ that pushed the instrument to its very limits. He rose to become one of the leading composers in France, and also a worldwide musical celebrity. This week Donald Macleod focuses each day on one specific organ work Messiaen composed, whilst exploring the period in which it was written along with those other instrumental works from the same time.

In the years following World War Two, Olivier Messiaen who up until that point was regarded mainly as a parish organist, found himself propelled into the limelight. He was referred to as the Atomic Bomb of Contemporary Music. In the summer of 1945 he turned his attention to a song cycle called Harawi, exploring themes of Love and Death. These songs may have been inspired by his wife Claire who was now seriously ill, or by a new women in his life, the pianist Yvonne Loriod. Similar to his Peruvian folklore-inspired choral work Cinq Rechants from a few years later, Harawi is in part based on the Quechua language of Peru. By 1947, Messiaen returned to the Paris Conservatoire as a teacher. Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Benjamin and even Quincy Jones were all taught by him at some point. Just a few years later, after a gap of some ten years, Messiaen returned to writing music for the organ with his Livre d'orgue. It is a pioneering work which pushes the instruments boundaries to the very limits. In this music Messiaen was keen to abolish our perception of time by employing heterophony, where several musical structures proceed alongside each other without perceptible coordination.

Chant des d茅port茅s
大象传媒 Symphony Chorus
大象传媒 Symphony Orchestra
Andrew Davis, conductor

L'Amour de Piroutcha (Harawi)
Rachel Yakar, soprano
Yvonne Loriod, piano

Cinq Rechants
RIAS Chamber Choir
Daniel Reuss, director

Livre d'orgue (5th - 7th mvts)
Hans-Ola Ericsson, organ

Producer Luke Whitlock.