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
Meditation
The Grand Organ in Sydney Town Hall is a vast romantic instrument, the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. It might seem an unlikely choice for this ethereal French music, among the greatest ever written for the organ, yet in the right hands it reveals many subtleties.