Indispensable recordings 27.07.2024. Proms Composer 2: Messiaen

[CallMePaul]

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.

[Pulcinella]

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!

[makropulos]

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!

[silvestrione]

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.

[oliver sudden]

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.

[oliver sudden]

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.

[makropulos]

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...

[silvestrione]

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)

[silvestrione]

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.

[makropulos]

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!

[Pulcinella]

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.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/events/works/11fee546-0753-4a30-b6dc-d4f077d4a56c

[smittims]

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.

[silvestrione]

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

[Pulcinella]

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.

[Petrushka]

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!