Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) was a French composer, organist and ornithologist whose colour-rich, rhythmically intricate music stands among the major achievements of the twentieth century.
Roman Catholicism, birdsong and a personal language of modes and non-retrogradable rhythms shaped his writing for organ, piano, chamber groups and orchestra.
Early organ pieces such as Le Banquet céleste sit beside cycles including La Nativité du Seigneur and L’Ascension, while the piano Préludes already show the harmonic world he would refine for decades. He notated birdsong worldwide and folded those transcriptions into the music; the complete Catalogue d’oiseaux (MD 3299) is a landmark of that naturalist imagination.
Australian programmes carry the same voice on major instruments, from the Sydney Town Hall Hill organ in Meditation (TP097) to cathedral and concert-hall organs elsewhere, placing his sacred and colouristic organ writing in local acoustic spaces.
Olivier Messiaen is featured on the following titles
Preludes and Sonata of Messiaen and Shostakovich
Michael Kieran Harvey, piano. Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) and Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) were two of the greatest composers of the twentieth century. Both were remarkable in that they discovered their own unique and distinctive creative voice when they were in their teens.
Catalogue d'oiseaux
Virtuoso pianist Michael Kieran Harvey’s dazzling pianistic pyrotechnics are on full display in this live performance recorded in Hobart in April 2005. Each of the thirteen pieces in Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux explores the calls and environment of a single bird species.
Compositions by Olivier Messiaen also appear on
Perth Concert Hall: Ronald Sharp organ
Jangoo Chapkhana plays the Ronald Sharp organ at Perth Concert Hall. The programme spans Buxtehude, Sweelinck, Bach, Balbastre, Langlais, Messiaen and Eben, and closes with Chapkhana’s own Variations on Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.
The Messiaen Nexus
This disc offers an extraordinary insight into the intellectual and creative talent of a fertile period at the Paris Conservatoire. Centred on Olivier Messiaen, the programme of violin and piano works traces his influence on students György Kurtág, George Benjamin and Pierre Boulez, and the mark of his teacher Paul Dukas.
North of the Yarra: Organs of Melbourne
Gordon Atkinson plays seven of Melbourne's finest organs, from the oldest surviving city instrument to the giant Town Hall organ, including St Patrick's Cathedral, The Scots' Church, St Paul's Cathedral and St Mary Star of the Sea, West Melbourne.
The Star of the Sea
A superb programme of Italian and French organ favourites, shaped to draw on every resource of the celebrated George Fincham grand organ at St Mary's Star-of-the-Sea, West Melbourne.
Mistika
Composer and keyboardist Linda Ceff sets past and present inspirations beside her own contemporary works. Homages to Stravinsky, Messiaen and Skryabin sit with multi-tracked piano, synthesised colour, bells and Asian-inflected writing.
A Recital of organ music from St. Paul's Cathedral Melbourne
The works on this recording span some eighty years of organ writing. Three come from the latter half of the nineteenth century; the remaining three were written in the first half of the twentieth.