The 13 pianists brought their own levels of avian awareness. All that is winged, even the grating corn crake, is painted with a mystical birder’s unworldly rose-colored pianistic glasses. The ninth movement, for instance, is devoted to Cetti’s warbler, a cute little brown bird with a violent call, yet one incapable of breaking the spell of a small tributary that is heard flowing with such rich harmonies that it may be the river of love. These elaborately evocative settings are precisely what makes us notice the birds. Frogs croak, a skylark soars above all in dazzling pianistic glitter, grasshopper warblers rattle as their names suggest, and one reed warbler enters into a rapturous contrapuntal duet with another. Messiaen provided florid descriptions of the movements, and in this one the reed warbler is the great orator of his local lily pond. The huge central movement, the one that can last over a half-hour, represents 27 hours in the life of the reed warbler. Some movements are about the birds and their interactions. He places his birds on cliffs, at river banks, in punishing arid sunshine and moldy forest darkness. The composer is less documentarian than poet.
INSANE SYNTHESIA SONGS PLAYED FOR REAL SERIES
Indispensable classical music for newbies and aficionados alikeĬoronavirus may have silenced our symphony halls, taking away the essential communal experience of the concert as we know it, but The Times invites you to join us on a different kind of shared journey: a new series on listening. The evocations come across not as translations of one kind of sound into another but as hearing birds speak in astonishing piano accents. There was no end to his versatility in turning birdsong into piano song. The ever-clattering keyboard attempts to mimic their myriad chirps, this way and that, producing a startling, exhausting, headache-making, metallic-sounding menagerie that never seems to end and makes zero sense to anyone without wings.īut that is also the genius of Messiaen’s piano writing.
Each of the movements - they range from about five to 30 minutes - is named for a specific bird, but many other kinds make their noisy appearances as secondary characters.
That included the series’ core artists Vicki Ray, Mark Robson, Thomas Kotcheff and Sarah Gibson, along with guest pianists, well-known and newcomers.Ī description of Messiaen’s “Catalogue” makes it sound crazy, which, of course, it is. Rhiannon Giddens, John Adams, Vikingur Olafsson and composer Gabriella Smith are draws, but Carlos Simon, the Attacca Quartet and Timo Andr also shine.Īlthough single-minded birder pianists with technique to burn (an extremely small species) do attempt the complete manic “Catalogue,” which lasts close to three hours in performance, Piano Spheres realistically split the duties among 13 soloists. Review: Ojai Music Festival begins a new era with exciting emerging talent Birds were in the minority, for the most part gracefully gliding over a distant hill likely out of range for the sensitively amplified piano.
Tables and folding chairs were set up on the lawn, with its lovely pond in the rear. The occasion was a rare complete performance of Messiaen’s obsessive “Catalogue d’Oiseaux,” 13 arresting virtuosic solo pieces suffused with the calls of dozens of birds that the composer heard while birding in the French countryside during the mid-1950s. The ever-venturesome piano series’ rowdy return to live concerts Sunday afternoon happened to be at - where else? - Audubon Center at Debs Park, a stopover point, just off our Pasadena Freeway, for migratory birds on their Pacific Flyway.Ī 9-foot, broad-beaked black Steinway grand landed on the center’s patio. What’s the alternative? Sensitive pianos don’t like the great outdoors, that’s for the birds. But after the initial video-vérité fascination of peeking into pianists’ living or practice rooms, a Zoom gloom set in as online recitals, be they amateur or professional, proliferated from seemingly everywhere. Like most arts groups, Piano Spheres got through a performance-free pandemic the best it could on Zoom.
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