Messaien

mke · May-6th-2003, 07:50 AM

I caught most of Messiaen's "20 regards sur l'enfant Jésus" on the radio a few days ago, my first encounter with Messiaen. Some of it I liked a lot.

Where should I start, apart from "20 regards"?

Douglas · May-6th-2003, 07:58 AM

MKE,

Try Visions de L'Amen, or indeed almost anything else you come across. There is a tremendous amount out there and I've yet to come across something not enjoyable.

Discovering Messaien opened up a whole new world for me, I hope you will derive similar pleasure.

Enjoy.

shrugs · May-6th-2003, 08:00 AM

I picked up a 20th century choral music lp from Hungary a few
months ago with Messiaen, Poulenc and others. Got me looking for more and I ran across a great French 2 lp set of Messiaen organ music. Out of this world! All 3 lp's set me back $2.

shrugs · May-6th-2003, 08:09 AM

Isn't it Messiaen?

Douglas · May-6th-2003, 08:14 AM

Yes, Shrugs, my bad.

MKE as you are in Belgium getting hold of the version of VdlA on the Naive Classique label shouldn't be too difficult. I enjoy that one a lot.

walto · May-6th-2003, 08:27 AM

I love a lot of his stuff, but I think my favorite is "Chronochromie."

lazarus · May-6th-2003, 09:39 AM

Beside Schoenberg and Stockhausen he´s my favorite composer from the 20th century.
I have never heard a composition by him that I don´t like. He´s totally gorgeous.
Some favorites are "Quatuor pour la fin du temps", "Des canyons aux étoiles" and "Couleurs de la cité céleste".

Monte Smith · May-6th-2003, 09:57 AM

I like a lot of the organ work, but then a lot of it freaks me out, too. Particularly I put one Messiaen CD by Boulez in the CD-player of my Ford Taurus and drove to Tacoma. Now Tacoma with the lightest, poppiest soundtrack is a dramatic and industrial wasteland. With Messiaen, it sounded like I was driving straight thru the black heart of Serial Killer's ville. Schnikey.

Jason Bivins · May-6th-2003, 10:31 AM

Monte, I had a similar experience but in a different location. On tour a couple years ago, we were leaving St. Louis and popped in "Trois Petites Liturgies de la Presence Divine" (my personal favorite Messiaen piece). As the piece built to a crazed polyrhythmic frenzy, a giant storm cloud in the shape of a skull was gathering to the north. We drove south quickly.

Brian Olewnick · May-6th-2003, 12:01 PM

I'm not real familiar with his oeuvre, though I should be. I love the quartet (I have a version by the Syrinx Quartet on Dutch Phillips). Saw a performance of Des Canyons aux Etoiles at Lincoln Center several years ago that I thought work beautifully about half the time.

shrugs · May-6th-2003, 02:26 PM

Here's one for Tanager!

Tanager · May-6th-2003, 02:48 PM

Shrugs, you shouldn't have. Now I've gotta get *you* something...*blush*.

Seriously...that's one of the coolest record jackets I've ever seen.

LeMo · May-6th-2003, 06:44 PM

mke,

Go for the "integral" records of Messiaen's piano music by Roger Muraro (it's better that most of the Loriod's one, IMO).
It's on "Accord" (distrib. by Universal) and you can buy the seven CDs separetely.

And you must absolutely get the "Quatuor pour la fin du temps", one of the great masterpiece of the last century.
There is lot of versions of the "Quatuor" and most of them are of very good quality (I didn't listen to all of them, anyway).

Michel Portal has recorded a good one, as it seems, but I've never get the opportunity to hear it.
The one I prefer is by Yvonne Loriod (piano), Wolfgang Meyer (clarinet), Manuel Fischer-Dieskau (cello) and Christoph Poppen (violin).
It's on EMI (CDC 7 54395 2) and it's from 1991.
Hope it's not out of print.

mke · May-7th-2003, 08:00 AM

I may have set some kind of record for fastest-followed recommendation: Quatuor pour la fin des temps was mine a mere 12 hours after LeMo's post.

Unfortunately, I didn't find the version you cited. Mine is with Eduard Brunner on clarinet + the Trio Fontenay. The "contemporary music" saleswoman said it was good (out of 3 versions), and it was only 6,19 euros!

I didn't realise Naxos was so cheap: I also picked up a random Scriabin (Piano concerto/ Prometheus, The poem of fire) with Konstantin Scherbakov on piano, the Russian State TV and Radio Choir and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra conducted by Igor Golovschin, as I've only heard the name and read some descriptions of his music which made it sound interesting.