Messiaen: La nativité from Christ Church, Oxford

[Pulcinella]

Messiaen: La Nativité du Seigneur with Benjamin Collyer (Senior Organ Scholar) and Felix Kirkby (Junior Organ Scholar)

Live on Monday 21 December 2020, at 19:30.

Details here:

https://www.chch.ox.ac.uk/christmas2020

[Finzi4ever]

Thanks for the heads up. I'm close enough but not convinced the instrument can deliver a convincing performance despite the undoubted skills and musicianship of the performers.

[Pulcinella]

Thanks for the heads up. I'm close enough but not convinced the instrument can deliver a convincing performance despite the undoubted skills and musicianship of the performers.

I was wondering that, too.
My first (LP) recording of the work was by Simon Preston, but before his (and that instrument's) time at Christ Church: recorded 07-05-1965, in Westminster Abbey (according to the Presto site).

[Bryn]

Thanks for the heads up. I'm close enough but not convinced the instrument can deliver a convincing performance despite the undoubted skills and musicianship of the performers.

I'd happily travel a fair distance to hear a performance of this quality on this instrument:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrLR0qGJd_8

[Keraulophone]

Thanks for the heads up. I'm close enough but not convinced the instrument can deliver a convincing performance despite the undoubted skills and musicianship of the performers.

I thought that Simon Preston, playing La Nativité in the inaugural recital of the organ in 1979, was reasonably convincing, but then we were all caught up in the excitement of hearing the Rieger for the first time. (Francis Grier gave us the very first listen the day before, prefacing the Academy of Ancient Music/Christ Church Choir’s Bach Magnificat in E flat with the ‘St Anne’ Prelude & Fugue.)

[Finzi4ever]

I'd happily travel a fair distance to hear a performance of this quality on this instrument:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrLR0qGJd_8

despite my initial reaction, it is an amazingly impressive performance. It is helped by the acoustic of the Dutch church. Artem Nyzhnyk has every right to look exhausted at the end of Dieu parmi nous!

[ardcarp]

Looking at the ChCh link above, it is a wonderful testamemt to the importance of music that the services with music are ticketed and those which are said are not.

[ardcarp]

Brilliant playing! Of course a classical Germanic organ in that building can't give the whole sensory experience of Messaien chez lui. But strangely that didn't matter a bit to me, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. (Apart, that is, from the quick jingle accompanying the view of CCO at the very end. Unnecessary?)