Customer Reviews

Messiaen: Turangalīla Symphony

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There are simply few words that can describe the absolute magnificence of this recording. Nagano assembles this vast mosaic in the most masterful way I can imagine. It is at once breathtaking and orgiastic! The Berlin Philharmonic is playing at their highest level....Aimard was made to play this work. The piano is well balanced with the ondes marenot and the rest of the ensemble. The recording itself is very clear. The various tempi are clearly defined within each of the movements. I would recommend this disc to anyone who has a love for great music, even if you already have a recording of the Turangalila. Nagano, Aimard, Kim, and the Berlin Philharmonic set the new standard of excellence for this colossal and imaginative work!

Great things don't always come in great packages, but this one certainly does! A typically gorgeous Teldec production, complete with the legendary Teldec sound. The TURANGALILA is vast and sprawling, but I find it endearing and easy to love. It is full of jarring juxtopositions, as when the 4th movement, featuring a grave Beethoven-like 5-note motif, is followed by the 5th movement's cheerful pop melody. Aimard is spectacular throughout on piano.

Messiaen, like Lutoslawski, bridges the early and late 20th centuries, and I can hear Debussy and pop and jazz elements along with foreshadowings of Xenakis in this optimistic and gargantuan music. According to Messiaen, the TURANGALILA-SYMPHONIE "...is a hymn to joy, a joy that is superhuman, overflowing, blinding, unlimited." Clearly an expression of Messiaen's deep Catholic faith, the symphony could scarcely be more different from the austere devotion of an Arvo Part!

Kent Nagano has alot to say about Messiaen and he does so here with the aid of the great Berlin Philharmonic in their first recording of this wonderful work.

Kent Nagano and the Berlin Philharmonic paint Messiaen's masterpiece on the grandest scale. Berlin use all the range of color and power that is has in its command and this is the best playing I have heard in this recording.

I like the recording very much to, with the possible exception of the last minute...where the recording does get somewhat cloudly. As exciting and as well played as last movement is, I think Nagano push the music to hard in terms of tempo. This music can still all the power and excitement without being pushed so far.

Other then the tempo of the last movement there is nothing here to quibble about. I would say that this is now the recording to have---Chung comes very close, next in line I would say. If you have a recording of this already, try to make room for this recording as well.

Olivier Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony is admittedly one work that won't please traditionalists who feel at home listening to the likes of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. And yet, it is truly one of the most intriguing, sonically majestic works composed in the symphonic genre. Kent Nagano's brilliant, exhuberant recording of this work with the Berlin Philharmonic may be the most exciting version recorded to date. Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, a disciple of Messiaen's, is marvellous throughout, especially in the solos. To their credit, the Berliners perform this piece with much brilliance and warmth, offering a splendid performance which ranks as well as their magnificient recent recordings of the Brahms symphonies with Harnoncourt conducting and those of Beethoven under Abbado's baton. Teldec's sound engineers have rendered one of the best recordings I have heard of the Berlin Phiharmonic, replete with much sonic range and atmosphere. For those unfamiliar with Messiaen's work, then this recording is truly a fine introduction.

I think it was T.S. Eliot who said that a great artist must create the audience by which he is appreciated. That's certainly true of Messiaen and his seminal Turangalila (premiered in America by Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood--if only he had recorded it!) Just as much as Le Scare, Turangalila is a shocking, cosmic work. It is raucous and primitive, but with a bizarre flavor at times of the slithery cabaret harmonies beloved by Poulenc and Milhaud. Stravinsky was much more disciplined and had more structural clarity than Messiaen; I imagine he would have also been appaled by the banality of the musical seeds that grow into luxuriant jungle here. Turangalila sprawls and uncoils its immense length like an engorged python.

Messiaen would go further in his obsession with exotic cultures, gamelan, bird calls, and storming the cosmos. His output is a bulging suitcase of noises I don't like opening, but here Nagano does so brilliantly I couldn't help but be won over. The virtuosity and sheer ease of the Berlin Phil. make you realize that at long last orchestras can toss off Turangalila without strain--something one cannot say about ealire recordings. I must say that at this level of committment, Nagano made a convert of me. I even went to a concert of Turangalila with Eschenbach and the Philadelphia Orch. in Carnegie Hall, an event greeted with cheers at the end. Messiaen has won--he created his audience after all.

In the mid-1940s Olivier Messiaen, the composer of a wide variety of Roman Catholic pious works, took a peculiar turn towards the subject of romantic love. A 1945 commission from the Boston Symphony Orchestra gave him carte blanche for a work of whatever proportions he desired. The "Turangalila-Symphony" (1946-1948), supposedly inspired by the legend of Tristan and Isolde, was the result.

The symphony is unconventional in structure, eschewing sonata form and comprising ten movements. It is a massive work both in length, well over an hour, and in the instrumental forces it requires. The orchestra is augmented with a larger percussion section, and there are prominent solo parts for ondes martenot, the early electronic instrument, and for piano. In fact, the symphony, whose fifth movement contains an elaborate piano cadenza, has been called a piano concerto as well. "Turangalila" is a showcase of all the elaborate concepts Western and non-Western that Messiaen had learned to date, especially Hindu rhythms (including Messiaen's favourite "non-retrogradable" ones) and gamelan-like colour. So, the work is inventive, but does it sound good? I have to say that yes, but only in moderation. Listening to it once in a great while can be a pleasant experience, but too much exposure reveals the work's syrupy, mushy overtones. No wonder that Boulez called it "brothel music". Messiaen the Christian mystic was one of the greatest composers of the 20th century--works like "Eclairs sur l'au dela" and "Quatuor pour la fin du temps" consistenly dazzle the listener--but as for Messiaen the lover, well, thank goodness this was just a temporary aside.

This Teldec recording sounds wonderful, with bright colours and sharp tones. The Berliner Philharmoniker lead by Kent Nagano perform Messiaen's 1990 version of the symphony, which as score samples in the liner notes show, was a substantial revision. One can be thankful that Nagano's pacing is expert enough to get the symphony onto a single compact disc without coming across as overly quick. Pierre-Laurent Aimard, friend of the composer and one of the world's finest pianists of contemporary repertoire, gives a dazzling performance. Dominique Kim appears on ondes martenot solo.

Magnificent live performance, inspired and involving,with virtuosistic contributions of the solists. The recorded sound is excellent. -Just a comment- I wonder why the review following mine has been published. It is written by someone who informs us that he doesn't like the composer and criticises the other reviwers, instead of sticking to give his opinion on the performance.(But see what he writes in his other "reviews...") This complex symphony is a masterpiece,Nagano's recording is for me one of the best,maybe the best, I warmly raccomand it, hoping you will share my enthusiasm.

Not sure how else to say it, but this is chopped into sections, more than is called for. Messiaen wrote in a peculiar manner, phrasing is somewhat in blocks. Nagano takes things too methodically, there's not the right amount of blending.
This Nagano/Berlin does not compare favorable with my first choice Ricardo Chailly/Concertgebouw, which I gladly give 5 Stars.
Concerning the above reviews, which frankly I've NOT bothered to read, is very typical of amazon reviews. Too amny give away too many stars.
Which frankly is not just and fair to alot better recordings.
NOTE: Buyer beware.
Sorry 2 stars.

I have now become dis-enchanted with Messiaen as of last week. READ Wilbod's review of the opera St Francsis/Nagano.
I have to agree with him.
Messiaen was OK for about 3 months after which I lost interest..