Indispensable recordings 27.07.2024. Proms Composer 2: Messiaen

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  • CallMePaul
    Full Member
    • Jan 2014
    • 789

    #16
    I have always enjoyed the Peter Hill recordings of Messiaen's piano music and the late Jennifer Bate's organ recordings. When I lived in London in the early 1990s I heard Hill play the Vingt Refards at Wigmore Hallone December and immediately bought the CDs on the Regis label (now defunct?). I am less familiar with Messiaen's orchestral and vocal music = I have Harawi sung by Jane manning on LP but now rarely play vinyl.

    Quatuor pour le Fin du Temps, I would have thought, should be in any essential Messiaen collection. I have Shaham/ Mayer/ Wanr/ Myun-Whun Chung on DG, plus Tashi on LP but sam open to other suggestions for this dark work.

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    • Pulcinella
      Host
      • Feb 2014
      • 10895

      #17
      Originally posted by silvestrione View Post
      I don't listen to as much Messiaen as I should, but Oiseaux Exotiques with Yvonne Loriod, Vaclav Neuman and the Czech Phil has long been one of my favourite recordings of anything, since I had the LP with its beautiful cover art..
      The other work I love and listen to is Chronochromie in the Boulez/Cleveland version, narrowly ahead of the Benjamin or Cambreling. I love the Vingt Regards, but cannot separate Loriod, Aimard, Osborne, etc

      I would love to know Macropoulos's five...or is he doing it on the R3?

      Edit, no of course, Gillian Moore
      He's lined up for Janacek!

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      • makropulos
        Full Member
        • Nov 2010
        • 1669

        #18
        Originally posted by Pulcinella View Post

        He's lined up for Janacek!
        Indeed I am doing Janacek. But here, for fun,, are five Messiaen 'indispensables':

        Vingt Regards, Roger Muraro (DVD, filmed performance, Accord/Universal)
        Des Canyons aux étoiles, Marius Constant, Ensemble Art Nova (Erato)
        La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur, Antal Dorati et al (Decca)
        Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, Pierre Boulez, Domaine musical (CBS or Erato – emphatically not his DG remake)
        La Nativité du Seigneur, Messiaen, Trinité organ (EMI) [I've got to have OM playing some of his own music on the instrument for which it was written]

        Some big gaps there: no Quartet, no Poèmes pour Mi, no Trois petites liturgies or Visions de l'Amen...I'd better stop thinking too much about this!




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        • silvestrione
          Full Member
          • Jan 2011
          • 1701

          #19
          Originally posted by makropulos View Post

          Indeed I am doing Janacek. But here, for fun,, are five Messiaen 'indispensables':

          Vingt Regards, Roger Muraro (DVD, filmed performance, Accord/Universal)
          Des Canyons aux étoiles, Marius Constant, Ensemble Art Nova (Erato)
          La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur, Antal Dorati et al (Decca)
          Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, Pierre Boulez, Domaine musical (CBS or Erato – emphatically not his DG remake)
          La Nativité du Seigneur, Messiaen, Trinité organ (EMI) [I've got to have OM playing some of his own music on the instrument for which it was written]

          Some big gaps there: no Quartet, no Poèmes pour Mi, no Trois petites liturgies or Visions de l'Amen...I'd better stop thinking too much about this!

          Thank you so much for that (and apologies for misspelling your screen name!).
          I have the second and fourth, and will have a listen.

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          • oliver sudden
            Full Member
            • Feb 2024
            • 605

            #20
            Originally posted by silvestrione View Post
            I don't listen to as much Messiaen as I should, but Oiseaux Exotiques with Yvonne Loriod, Vaclav Neuman and the Czech Phil has long been one of my favourite recordings of anything, since I had the LP with its beautiful cover art..
            It is a _superb_ recording to which I return often and the Czech winds supply a palette of colours which to my ears has a not un-French liveliness about it.

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            • oliver sudden
              Full Member
              • Feb 2024
              • 605

              #21
              Originally posted by CallMePaul View Post
              I have always enjoyed
              Quatuor pour le Fin du Temps, I would have thought, should be in any essential Messiaen collection. I have Shaham/ Mayer/ Wanr/ Myun-Whun Chung on DG, plus Tashi on LP but sam open to other suggestions for this dark work.
              There’s a superb recording from Deinzer/Gawriloff/Palm/Kontarsky on EMI. Not a very French palette here but Palm in the cello movement is, well, indispensable. Messiaen’s own recording is also a must, I think. And the Erato with Guy Deplus playing clarinet and three others whose names escape me for the moment.

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              • makropulos
                Full Member
                • Nov 2010
                • 1669

                #22
                Originally posted by oliver sudden View Post
                It is a _superb_ recording to which I return often and the Czech winds supply a palette of colours which to my ears has a not un-French liveliness about it.
                That's a terrific record! Deserves a place on any shortlist...

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                • silvestrione
                  Full Member
                  • Jan 2011
                  • 1701

                  #23
                  Originally posted by makropulos View Post

                  That's a terrific record! Deserves a place on any shortlist...
                  I'm so pleased to find you think so! (Oiseaux Exotiques, Loriod, Neuman, Czech Phil)

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                  • silvestrione
                    Full Member
                    • Jan 2011
                    • 1701

                    #24
                    I'm listening to my Erato discs of La Tansfiguration de Notre Seigneur. It's jogged my memory of a Proms performance years ago. Just wondering if anyone else remembers it, and if it has made it onto CD/streaming. The RAH seems an ideal acoustic for such a work.

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                    • makropulos
                      Full Member
                      • Nov 2010
                      • 1669

                      #25
                      Originally posted by silvestrione View Post
                      I'm listening to my Erato discs of La Tansfiguration de Notre Seigneur. It's jogged my memory of a Proms performance years ago. Just wondering if anyone else remembers it, and if it has made it onto CD/streaming. The RAH seems an ideal acoustic for such a work.
                      If you mean the 1970 UK premiere at the first night then I not only remember it but I was there - and it instantly ignited my love of Messiaen’s music - a big moment in my young life!

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                      • Pulcinella
                        Host
                        • Feb 2014
                        • 10895

                        #26
                        Originally posted by makropulos View Post

                        If you mean the 1970 UK premiere at the first night then I not only remember it but I was there - and it instantly ignited my love of Messiaen’s music - a big moment in my young life!
                        Details here.
                        Also performed in 2008.

                        The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

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                        • smittims
                          Full Member
                          • Aug 2022
                          • 4092

                          #27
                          Yes, I remember it. I wasn't a Messaien fan and I thought the scoring was extravagant ( I was Sibelius fan at the time). I remember Edmund Rubbra called it 'repetitively tedious and tediously repetitive'. Two or three years later I listened 'repeatedly' to the Dorati recording and grew to enjoy the work . It was no mean feat to create such a heiratic devotional work in a 20th-century context . I remember pouring over the (borrowed) score many times.

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                          • silvestrione
                            Full Member
                            • Jan 2011
                            • 1701

                            #28
                            1970 too early for me, I was in New Zealand for a few years. It would have been the 2008.

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                            • Pulcinella
                              Host
                              • Feb 2014
                              • 10895

                              #29
                              With apologies for layout, since this is copied and pasted from the playlist, it looks like these are the tracks played from the chosen recordings.
                              • Olivier Messiaen


                                Poemes Pour Mi: VIII: Le Collier

                                Performer: Stephen De Pledge. Singer: Gweneth-Ann Rand.
                                • BLACK BOX.
                              • Quartet for the End of Time: Danse de la fureur pour les sept trompettes

                                Performer: Erich Gruenberg. Performer: Michel Béroff. Performer: Gervase de Peyer. Performer: William Pleeth.
                                • MESSIAEN: QUARTET FOR THE END OF TIME; CHRONOCHROMIE.
                                • WARNER CLASSICS.
                                • 6.
                              • Messiaen: Turangalîla-Symphonie: IV. Chant d'amour 2

                                Conductor: Juanjo Mena. Orchestra: Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra.
                                • MESSIAEN: TURANGALÎLA SYMPHONY.
                                • HYPERION.
                                • 4.
                              • Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum: Et j'entendu la voix d'une foule immense

                                Orchestra: The Cleveland Orchestra. Conductor: Pierre Boulez.
                                • MESSIAEN: ET EXSPECTO RESURRECTIONEM MORTUORUM; CHRONOCHROMIE; LA VILLE D'EN HAU.
                                • DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON (DG).
                                • 13.
                              • Visions de l'Amen, I/25: VII. Amen de la Consommation

                                Performer: Tamara Stefanovich. Performer: Pierre‐Laurent Aimard.
                                • VISIONS.
                                • PENTATONE.
                                • 7.

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                              • Petrushka
                                Full Member
                                • Nov 2010
                                • 12238

                                #30
                                Originally posted by Pulcinella View Post

                                Details here.
                                Also performed in 2008.

                                https://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/events/w...c-d4f077d4a56c
                                First Night too! I was only just past my 16th birthday and had never heard of Messiaen at that point. 8 years later I was to meet him!
                                "The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard Haitink

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