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.
“My faith is the grand drama of my life. I’m a believer, so I sing words of God to those who have no faith. I give bird songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them, make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz, and paint colours for those who see none.” (Olivier Messiaen)
Michael Kieran Harvey and Peter Cundall perform Messiaen’s naturalist masterpiece. This live Australian premiere of the complete Catalogue d’oiseaux was presented by Ten Days on the Island over 2–3 April 2005 at Morrilla in Tasmania, with Cundall narrating Messiaen’s prose notes for each of the thirteen tableaux.
It was the brilliant Barrie Kosky who first put the idea of performing the entire Catalogue d’oiseaux in my head in the mid 90s, but at the time the prospect scared the daylights out of me – how could anyone perform these seven volumes at once, and more to the point why? Why subject an Australian audience and oneself to the most notoriously difficult, monumental and uncompromising French piano cycle ever written simply for the sake of a premiere?
I had first visited Tasmania in the late 1980s. After moving to Tasmania in 2003 and seeing first hand the effects of greed and stupidity on one of the most pristine environments in the world (as well as being almost run off the road several times by convoys of logging trucks), the idea of performing this cycle as a personal, gentle lament for the destruction of habitat became clear to me and gave the immense effort of performing it, and listening to it, powerful meaning. It seems we cannot change the course of global desertification because we cannot control ourselves, but some gifted individuals such as Olivier Messiaen can capture the disappearing species as music, which may live on a little longer.
Messiaen to me represents a lynchpin of the history of music, a direct link to the great genius and breadth of spirit of Bach, Beethoven, and Liszt. Recently it was proved scientifically through tracking mitochondrial DNA that 45 million years ago the ancestor of all the songbirds in the world migrated from Gondwana and spawned the 4600 species of songbirds in the world – Australia holds special significance as the crucible of the world’s songbirds, and one could extrapolate, the birth of music itself. Written at the same time as Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, the harrowing vision of a world made silent by human’s war on nature, the Catalogue d’oiseaux seems to be particularly pertinent to us now – a period of accelerating species extinctions – as a symbol of the diversity of life and a celebration of the real, the original musical virtuosos.
The types of music in the Catalogue are rarely heard these days, and are just as rare as the birdsongs portrayed. They require different ways of listening: different concepts of time, the ‘universe in a nutshell’ as it were. The central movement for instance, La Rousserolle Effarvatte, describes a complete 27 hours in just half an hour. Like a fractal equation, even one chord of Messiaen presages a cosmos of creation. It is the complete antithesis of the ‘easy listening’ trend in much contemporary music, the outcome of the application of blinkered market strategies to an art form. Be courageous and open, and your patience will be rewarded, just as the heroic ornithologist must wait seemingly eons for the satisfaction of one glimpse, one snippet of glorious melody.
Reviews
A bizarre double act but it works . . . . with its excellent liner notes and fierce artistic commitment it reaffirms Kieran Harvey’s place at the forefront of Australian pianism
Catalogue d’oiseaux is a work of prodigious dimensions, a phantasmagoria of sounds and forms, some airy and mysterious, others monumental, incandescent with emotion, framed by the composer to reveal with crystalline acuity the birdsong he recorded for years and the creatures’ characters and habitats … The narrator, ABC gardening expert Peter Cundall, was, like Messiaen, a naturalist, bird-lover and prisoner of war in the 1940s. The empathic Harvey-Cundall partnership, and its championing of nature, was generous and sincere.
The music calls for pianistic daring and stamina, qualities Kieran Harvey has in abundance. He delivers the music with unflagging zest for the project and the belief it is both a statement about and record of declining avian species on our planet largely though human greed. He gives the music’s clusters and flashes of sound a virtuosic sweep with the sheer dynamism of his style and a tinkling clarity like – well, bird song actually
Few Australian pianists can touch Michael Kieran Harvey, one of the most exciting exponents of contemporary music in the country
This is a monumental achievement in anyone’s terms
Another fine release from the ever adventurous Move label
… Harvey’s pianism is superb. He is truly one of the most, if not the most, interesting pianists in the country…
… the most arresting performance … came from Michael Kieran Harvey. This pianist has recently recorded the complete Messiaen Catalogue d’oiseaux, a mammoth undertaking and a cruel test for any pianist. Between two of the shorter pieces – Le loriot and L’alouette lulu – Harvey beat a fascinating path through the half hour of La rousserolle effarvatte, an entire world of wildlife in itself rather than an unadorned picture of the reed warbler. With impressive concentration and his trademark virtuosic brilliance, Harvey stormed through these pages, relishing their clanging explosions of colour and underlying ferocity but clearly outlining the segment’s palindrome-like nature, motifs and sound patterns moulded around a central axis with an almost unnerving rigour.
Artists
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.
Michael Kieran Harvey
Australian pianist and composer Dr Michael Kieran Harvey FAHA is among the foremost interpreters of contemporary piano music of his generation. A champion of Australian music, he regularly commissions new work and has performed with the country’s leading contemporary ensembles and orchestras.
Peter Cundall
Peter Cundall has been gardening since he was a child during the 1930s. Born in Manchester England in 1927 he first started gardening after school and during holidays by laying turf lawns. Today, Peter is best known as a long-running presenter of Gardening Australia on ABC TV.
Audio preview
Tracks
- Peter Cundall introduction / part 1 2:53
- Narration and motifs: The Alpine Chough 4:18
- i. The Alpine Chough Olivier Messiaen 7:26
- Narration and motifs: The Golden Oriole 3:13
- ii. The Golden Oriole Olivier Messiaen 7:38
- Narration and motifs: The Blue Rock Thrush 3:29
- iii. The Blue Rock Thrush Olivier Messiaen 13:07
- Narration and motifs: The Black-eared Wheatear 6:59
- iv. The Black-eared Wheatear Olivier Messiaen 14:26
- Narration and motifs: The Tawny Owl 2:05
- v. The Tawny Owl Olivier Messiaen 5:48
Disc 2
- Peter Cundall introduction / part 2 1:52
- Narration and motifs: The Woodlark 1:47
- vi. The Woodlark Olivier Messiaen 7:17
- Narration and motifs: The Reed Warbler 11:02
- vii. The Reed Warbler Olivier Messiaen 27:59
- Narration and motifs: The Short-toed Lark 2:27
- viii. The Short-toed Lark Olivier Messiaen 5:27
- Narration and motifs: Cetti’s Warbler 6:02
- ix. Cetti’s Warbler Olivier Messiaen 10:33
Disc 3
- Peter Cundall introduction / part 3 :27
- Narration and motifs: The Rock Thrush 5:21
- x. The Rock Thrush Olivier Messiaen 16:38
- Narration and motifs: The Buzzard 3:31
- xi. The Buzzard Olivier Messiaen 9:48
- Narration and motifs: The Black Wheatear 3:09
- xii. The Black Wheatear Olivier Messiaen 8:06
- Narration and motifs: The Curlew 4:48
- XIII. The Curlew Olivier Messiaen 12:14
Performers
- Michael Kieran Harvey · disc 1 tracks 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11; disc 2 tracks 3, 5, 7 and 9; disc 3 tracks 3, 5, 7 and 9
- Peter Cundall · all except disc 1 tracks 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11; disc 2 tracks 3, 5, 7 and 9; disc 3 tracks 3, 5, 7 and 9
Contributors
Front cover and CD label paintings
Graeme Lee
Where to listen
Catalogue d'oiseaux is available for streaming through Apple Music. It can also be purchased through the iTunes Music Store.
Catalogue d'oiseaux is available as a CD. It can be purchased online through Buywell Music or the Australian Music Centre which both offer online ordering.
Product details
- Catalogue number
- MD 3299
- List price
- $35.00 AUD
- Total playing time
- 209 minutes 50 seconds
- Producer
- Duncan Yardley
- Recording Engineer
- Jim Aitkins
- Mastering Engineer
- Martin Wright
- Venue
- Moorills Estate, Tasmania
- Credit
- Graeme Lee
- Release date
- 2005
- Musical work
copyright - © 2005 Move Records
- Sound recording
copyright - ℗ 2005 Move Records
- Categories
- Classical, Keyboard, Spoken word
- Genres
- Modernist Classical, Spoken Word
- Barcode
- EAN 9314574329926
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