Pierre-Laurent Aimard - Messiaen: Catalogue d’oiseaux, I-42 (2018) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Renowned French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard kicks off his exclusive engagement to PENTATONE with a recording of Olivier Messiaen’s Catalogue d’Oiseaux (1956-1958). The pianist had intimate ties to the composer himself and his wife, Yvonne Loriod, for whom Messiaen wrote the Catalogue. Praised by The Guardian as “one of the best Messiaen interpreters around,“ this is Aimard’s first recording of Messiaen’s most extensive, demanding and colourful piano composition.

Due to its radical naturalism, the Catalogue d’Oiseaux is exceptional within the repertoire for solo piano. It is the grand hymn to nature from a man who never ceased to marvel at the stupefying beauty of landscapes or the magic of bird song.

With his Catalogue, Messiaen tried – in his own words – “to render exactly the typical birdsong of a region, surrounded by its neighbours from the same habitat, as well as the form of song at different hours of the day and night,” suggesting an almost scientific approach to his subjects. The idea of ‘reproduction’ may have been central to Messiaen’s conception of the Catalogue d’Oiseaux, but in the finished work we hear a great composer at work, a master of innovative structures who finds an astonishing range of piano sonorities.

In a world that is increasingly being destroyed by man, Aimard views this cycle as “a musical refuge that resonates with an audience ever more concerned, expanded and affected.”

Tracklist:
01. Catalogue d’oiseaux, I/42: No. 1, Le chocard des alpes
02. Catalogue d’oiseaux, I/42: No. 2, Le loriot
03. Catalogue d’oiseaux, I/42: No. 3, Le merle bleu
04. Catalogue d’oiseaux, I/42: No. 4, Le traquet stapazin
05. Catalogue d’oiseaux, I/42: No. 5, La chouette hulotte
06. Catalogue d’oiseaux, I/42: No. 6, L’alouette lulu
07. Catalogue d’oiseaux, I/42: No. 7, La rousserolle effarvatte
08. Catalogue d’oiseaux, I/42: No. 8, L’alouette calandrelle
09. Catalogue d’oiseaux, I/42: No. 9, La bouscarle
10. Catalogue d’oiseaux, I/42: No. 10, Le merle de roche
11. Catalogue d’oiseaux, I/42: No. 11, La buse variable
12. Catalogue d’oiseaux, I/42: No. 12, Le traquet rieur
13. Catalogue d’oiseaux, I/42: No. 13, Le courlis cendré

Personnel:
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano