![]() There are pieces full of melody – Le loriot or La bouscarle – and songs rich in timbre but not saturated with colour like La merle de roche. The material is often raw and dissonant, but Messiaen often uses what are traditionally blocks of dissonance to create consonance. Le chocard des alpes and Le buse variable are mostly articulated by shouts, where we are close to noise the French landscape is very present and raw. La chouette hulotte boldly maps out territory for experimentation – a rhythmic study at the start, by the end a study in timbre. L’alouette lulu is a kind of antiphonal poem. The 13 compositions of the Catalogue are very different to each other, in length, form and intent. Any new recording of one of the 20th-century’s major piano cycles is a major event. From an Alpine crow circling rocks and precipices to a lonely curlew off the coast of Brittany from a golden oriole singing in the sun to a tawny owl hooting in a dark forest… The Catalogue d’Oiseaux of Olivier Messiaen forms an extraordinary and varied tribute to the landscape and bird-life of France, and to its 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. ![]()
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