Messiaen / Aimard - Catalogue D'oiseaux - SUPER-AUDIO CD [Super Audio CD (SACD)]

Renowned pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard's recording of Olivier Messiaen's Catalogue d'Oiseaux created a sensation when first released on PENTATONE in 2018, and now returns to the market in an attractively-priced stereo re-issue. Aimard had intimate ties to the composer himself and his wife, Yvonne Loriod, for whom Messiaen wrote the Catalogue, a grand hymn to nature from a man who never ceased to marvel at the stupefying beauty of landscapes or the magic of bird song. With his Catalogue, Messiaen tried - in his own words - Inchto render exactly the typical birdsong of a region, surrounded by it's neighbours from the same habitat, as well as the form of song at different hours of the day and night,Inch suggesting an almost scientific approach to his subjects. The idea of 'reproduction' may have been central to Messiaen's conception of the Catalogue d'Oiseaux, but in the finished work we hear a great composer at work, a master of innovative structures who finds an astonishing range of piano sonorities. Thanks to Aimard's ability to evoke this colourful opus, his interpretation has turned into an absolute reference recording. This first within Aimard's exclusive partnership with PENTATONE received many accolades, including a Jahrespreis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik. Since then, recordings of Beethoven (2021), Bartok (2023, with San Francisco Symphony and Esa-Pekka Salonen) and Schubert (2024) have appeared on PENTATONE, as well as piano four hands albums with Tamara Stefanovich (Visions in 2022 and Nicolaou Etudes & Frames in 2023).

The Catalogue d'Oiseaux of Olivier Messiaen forms an extraordinary and varied tribute to the landscape and bird-life of France, and to it's composer's powers of invention as he explored and developed innovations in harmony, melody and rhythm at a time when all the elements of music were in flux and up for grabs. The 13 compositions of the Catalogue are very different from one other, in length, form and intent. L'alouette lulu is a kind of antiphonal poem. La chouette hulotte boldly maps out territory for experimentation. Le chocard des alpes and Le buse variable are mostly articulated by shouts, where we are close to noise. The material is often raw and dissonant, but Messiaen often uses what are traditionally blocks of dissonance to create consonance. There are pieces full of melody - Le loriot or La bouscarle - and songs rich in timbre but not saturated with color like La merle de roche. He liked to convey the impression that he composed music in isolation from the world around him, inspired first and foremost by God and by the birds whom he called God's musicians. The Italian pianist Ciro Longobardi has made a specialty of 20th and 21st-century music. He won a major piano prize at the crucible of European modernism in music, Darmstadt - only the second Italian pianist to do so - and he has given Italian premieres of significant works by the likes of Ives, Kurtág and Xenakis. With both an assured technique and a sympathetic grasp of the idioms of the great music of our own time, he is well placed to make an outstanding contribution to the rich history of the Catalogue d'Oiseaux on record.

Double Edge - Catalogue D'oiseaux [COMPACT DISCS] date 10/12/1994