Customer Reviews

Messiaen: Trois Petites Liturgies De La Presence Divine, etc. / Couraud, Loriod, et al

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Amongst Olivier Messiaen's canon, there are a great many little-known pieces of at least as much passion, drama and emotion as his best-known works. Harawi is one example, "Trois Petites Liturgies De La Presence Divine" is perhaps even better.

Designed as a short meditation of the Roman Catholic liturgy, "Trois Petites Liturgies De La Presence Divine" really is a remarkable work of dramatic, ecstatic structure created by the classic Messiaen piano line which is one of the most distinctive trademarks of any composer. There are many parts in the three sections of this piece where there is very little piano and the quiet celesta produces some really touching melodies.

The voices here are, however, what makes "Trois Petites Liturgies De La Presence Divine" such an essential listen. They almost sound like singers in the most passionate, emotional prayer imaginable, and the feeling their simple, yet melodic harmonies create is actually enhanced by the fact that they are in an incomprehensible language. Moreover, the voices almost seem like the most passionate angels compared to the pomposity of so many classical singers I used to hear on my mother's records or the ABC. All in all, "Trois Petites Liturgies De La Presence Divine" is a rela treat and it was remarkably luck that I found it.

The second part of this two-CD set consists of Messiaen himself performing "Meditations sur le Mystere de la Sainte Trinite". As Messiaen was a performer in churches throughout his life as a composer, it is interesting to hear him actually playing. Strangely, his performances of this intense, but very dense and slow-burning music are not quite so inaccessible even as the longer performances of his organ works by Latry, let alone those by Jennifer Bate which was the first classical music I ever seriously listened to and are extremely challenging for the beginner to classical music.

The first part alone would recommend this collection, and the second part should whet your appetite. Messiaen, as shown here, composed truly emotional and mystical music that deserves and requires serious listening, but is still reasonably accessible to those with little experience of "serious" music.

I've done much comparative listening on Messiaen's Liturgies - the premiere performer Roger Désormière in 1945 (Petites Liturgies/La Voyante / Cto Pour Piano Et Orchestre), Couraud's first recording in 1954 mono (Rarissimes), Bernstein 1961 in vivid stereo and too often garish colors (Bernstein Century - Music of Our Time / New York PO), Stephane Cardon's excellent 1983 recording (Turangalila Symphony), Terry Edwards' tame interpretation in 1991 (Messiaen: Trois Petites Liturgies / Cinq Rechants / O Sacrum Convivium), Nagano in 1994, dynamic but too secular in feeling (Olivier Messiaen: Réveil des Oiseaux; Trois Petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine), Reinbert de Leeuw's vehement and furious live recording from 2002 (in the huge Schoenberg Ensemble box, The Schoenberg Ensemble Edition Box) - and I haven't heard better than Couraud's 1964 recording.

First, the 1964 sonics are stupendous, marred only by a touch of pre-echo in the softer passages, but letting you hear vividly all the instrumental details - essential with a composer for who timbral colors had so much importance. Second, I wouldn't have expected it of a French chorus, but the Maîtrise de l'ORTF is excellent, pure-sounding and homogeneous. And that was NOT an easy feat with Couraud's time-suspended tempos in all the slow passages. My only quibble here is that the solo soprano in the slow section of the third movement, at 3:53, is a little too operatic. But she has twice two bars to sing.

Which brings me to Third: Couraud's conducting is revelatory and incomprable, both in those time suspended and ecstatic moments, and in the sense of exultant joy which he brings to the second movement: in comparison (to limit myself to the stereo versions), Bernstein and Edwards are mundane in the slow sections (just compare Couraud's 10:20 in the first movement and 19:50 in the finale, to Bernstein's 9:59 / 15:29 and Edwards' 9:34 / 17:30), Bernstein is grim and almost angry in the second movement and Edwards there is laid back and uninvolved. Cardon's chorus is not quite as good as Couraud's, and he too is a tad too laid-back in the second movement, lacking Couraud's sense of exultation. Nagano is a bit too secular in the first movement and his sonics aren't as vivid as Couraud's. As for De Leeuw, he is quite unique in his own way, vehement to the point of fury, less Messiaen's mystical nuns than the possessed of Loudun, but that certainly is a skewed and flawed view of the composition. Fourth, this recording reminds you - if ever you had doubted or forgotten - what a great Messiaen pianist his wife Yvonne Loriod was (although she has somewhat mellowed her staccato playing in the end of phrases in the first movement bird calls, since her previous recording with Couraud in 1954) and Jeanne Loriod at the Ondes Martenot is no slouch either.

I still have to hear the recent recording of Chung (Myung-Whun Chung Conducts Messiaen), as well as the 1966 live recording of Gunter Wand (Günter Wand-Edition, Vol. 2: Messiaen, Webern, Fortner), whom the composer praises, in the preface to his scores, with Couraud and Désormière, as an important champion of Liturgies. But it is hard to imagine how Couraud could be bettered. Yes, I can imagine even more angelic voices. It would be great to hear a version of Liturgies sung by one of those English children's Cathedral Choirs. Anyway, I'll complete this review when I've heard those two other versions.

This double CD is excerpted from the mammoth Messiaen box that Erato published in 1992 (Olivier Messiaen (Collected Works & an Interview with Claude Samuel)). The couplings seemed motivated more by the necessity to stuff everything together than by program coherence. Instead of the logical choice of Couraud's-conducted Cinq Rechants (you will find it under ASIN B000005EAH but I ran out of authorized links), we get Messiaen playing his own "Meditations sur le mystère de la Sainte Trinité" on his "own" organ from the Trinité church in Paris. Reading the thick explanations given in the liner notes is not very entertaining, but funny: Messiaen tried to invent an alphabet of notes - typical Messiaen stuff, chords associated with colors and all. Each of the nine movements is given its proper and detailed "musical and theological explanation"(!) - English translation provided. Yet, despite the bird quotations what I hear is an hour of grim, forbidding and overbearing organ - awe-inspiring infinity of God rather than joy-inspiring God of Love. But Liturgies has been reissued in Europe on a budget collection paired with Hymne and Offrandes Oubliées conducted by Marius Constant (Asin B000027I49 on the French sister company) and with Et Expecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum conducted by Boulez (ASIN B00004UWE2)