Messiaen Piano Works
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Olivier Messiaen
Label: Unicorn-Kanchana
Magazine Review Date: 5/1988
Media Format: Cassette
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: DKPC9062
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Catalogue d'oiseaux, Movement: Le loriot |
Olivier Messiaen, Composer
Olivier Messiaen, Composer Peter Hill, Piano |
| Catalogue d'oiseaux, Movement: Le merle bleu |
Olivier Messiaen, Composer
Olivier Messiaen, Composer Peter Hill, Piano |
| Catalogue d'oiseaux, Movement: Le traquet stapazin |
Olivier Messiaen, Composer
Olivier Messiaen, Composer Peter Hill, Piano |
| Catalogue d'oiseaux, Movement: La chouette hulotte |
Olivier Messiaen, Composer
Olivier Messiaen, Composer Peter Hill, Piano |
| Catalogue d'oiseaux, Movement: L'alouette-lulu |
Olivier Messiaen, Composer
Olivier Messiaen, Composer Peter Hill, Piano |
| Catalogue d'oiseaux, Movement: Le chocard des alpes |
Olivier Messiaen, Composer
Olivier Messiaen, Composer Peter Hill, Piano |
Composer or Director: Olivier Messiaen
Label: Unicorn-Kanchana
Magazine Review Date: 5/1988
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 59
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: DKPCD9062
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Catalogue d'oiseaux, Movement: Le loriot |
Olivier Messiaen, Composer
Olivier Messiaen, Composer Peter Hill, Piano |
| Catalogue d'oiseaux, Movement: Le merle bleu |
Olivier Messiaen, Composer
Olivier Messiaen, Composer Peter Hill, Piano |
| Catalogue d'oiseaux, Movement: Le traquet stapazin |
Olivier Messiaen, Composer
Olivier Messiaen, Composer Peter Hill, Piano |
| Catalogue d'oiseaux, Movement: La chouette hulotte |
Olivier Messiaen, Composer
Olivier Messiaen, Composer Peter Hill, Piano |
| Catalogue d'oiseaux, Movement: L'alouette-lulu |
Olivier Messiaen, Composer
Olivier Messiaen, Composer Peter Hill, Piano |
| Catalogue d'oiseaux, Movement: Le chocard des alpes |
Olivier Messiaen, Composer
Olivier Messiaen, Composer Peter Hill, Piano |
Author: Michael Oliver
It was the obvious title to choose, Catalogue d'oiseaux, but since the first word suggests something meticulously if not manically methodical and the second implies an exclusive obsession with bird-song, perhaps Messiaen ought to have called it something else, after all. The sheer length of the Catalogue and its fearsome technical difficulties are hindrances enough, heaven knows, to its acceptance as one of the pinnacles of twentieth-century piano music without the mental image of an amiable eccentric in a beret perched in a tree at two o'clock in the morning working out whether long-eared owls shriek in G or F sharp. The first piece in the cycle is a pretty fair indication of what Messiaen is really up to. Would you describe the Alpine Chough (whose voice is as melodious as a rusty gate) or the Golden Eagle (normally glimpsed about two miles up, if you're lucky: it could be singing ''Una voce poco fa'' for all any earthbound ornitho-musicologist could tell) as a 'feathered songster'? No, this is a piece about rearing cliffs and vertiginous ice-falls, about the majestic soaring rather than the problematic song of the eagle, about the cold transparency of mountain air and the vast perspectives of mountain vistas, sparsely but comfortingly populated by birds, not a backdrop to them. Even when the bird in question is capable of ''Una voce poco fa'' (with variations worthy of Patti) as in the following piece named after the Golden Oriole, the music is as much concerned with the numinous ancient oaks that are its habitat (mysterious Debussyan chords) and the breathless stillness of noon in high summer as with the Oriole itself or its virtuoso companions the Garden Warblers.
Peter Hill's outstandingly lucid account of the first six 'landscapes' from the catalogue is brilliantly onomatopoeic wherever the evocation of a lark or a nightingale really is the central issue, but after a hearing of his performance you are at least as likely to remember the gorgeous sunrise and sunset in No. 4 (''The black-eared wheatear'') or the darkness filled with nocturnal menace and the physical sensation of pounding heartbeats in No. 5 (''The tawny owl''). Bird-songs, by their very nature, are tricky to play, but they are only the preliminary difficulties placed in the way of any pianist undertaking this cycle, each piece is as much concerned with evoking place and mood (exalted in the opening mountain-scape, oppressed with terror in ''The tawny owl'' and filled with solemn wonder in the succeeding, contrasting 'nocturne', ''The woodlark''). As anyone who has ever been woken by a dawn chorus will know, birds can get monotonous after a while. This cycle never does in a performance as successful as this is at evoking temperature, time of year and time of day, place and space. Messiaen would say that rocks and trees and water, the rising sun and the mystery of night all speak the language of God, birds doing so all the more clearly because their song truly is a 'language'. I would say that Peter Hill has conveyed the range and contrast of this cycle, its astonishing palette of keyboard texture and colour, with remarkable success, and that I look forward eagerly to its completion. The recorded sound is very fine indeed.'
Peter Hill's outstandingly lucid account of the first six 'landscapes' from the catalogue is brilliantly onomatopoeic wherever the evocation of a lark or a nightingale really is the central issue, but after a hearing of his performance you are at least as likely to remember the gorgeous sunrise and sunset in No. 4 (''The black-eared wheatear'') or the darkness filled with nocturnal menace and the physical sensation of pounding heartbeats in No. 5 (''The tawny owl''). Bird-songs, by their very nature, are tricky to play, but they are only the preliminary difficulties placed in the way of any pianist undertaking this cycle, each piece is as much concerned with evoking place and mood (exalted in the opening mountain-scape, oppressed with terror in ''The tawny owl'' and filled with solemn wonder in the succeeding, contrasting 'nocturne', ''The woodlark''). As anyone who has ever been woken by a dawn chorus will know, birds can get monotonous after a while. This cycle never does in a performance as successful as this is at evoking temperature, time of year and time of day, place and space. Messiaen would say that rocks and trees and water, the rising sun and the mystery of night all speak the language of God, birds doing so all the more clearly because their song truly is a 'language'. I would say that Peter Hill has conveyed the range and contrast of this cycle, its astonishing palette of keyboard texture and colour, with remarkable success, and that I look forward eagerly to its completion. The recorded sound is very fine indeed.'
Messiaen Piano Works
Messiaen Piano Works
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