PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD

Tijdens een moeilijke periode in zijn leven noteert Olivier Messiaen heel precies de zang van vogels in diverse streken van Frankrijk. Aangespoord door Jacques Delamain noteert Messiaenj tussen 1956 en 1958 de zang van dertien verschillende vogels. Het resultaat is een twee en een half uur durend fascinerend pianowerk. Het werk bevat niet alleen de zang van de vogels maar verklankt ook de omgeving waarin de vogels zich bevinden. Aan de hand van fragmenten laat Pierre-Laurent Aimard op de DVD horen hoe de composities in elkaar steken. Ook laat Aimard een fragment van één van de vogels horen en wat Messiaen schrijft. De overeenkomst is verbluffend. Een prachtig zorgvuldig samengesteld album met uitvoerige beschrijvingen van de dertien werken. Pierre-Laurent Aimard, die in het laatste jaar van de compositie werd geboren, speelt subliem. Aimard kreeg ondermeer les van Yvonne Loroid, die als eerste pianist deze werken met veel succes uitvoerde.

Messiaen: Catalogue d'oiseaux Books 1-7 (complete)

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)


Grammaphone
April 2018
Aimard’s interpretations are anything but tame. His dynamic range is formidable, his voicing of chords scrupulously faithful, his clarity unimpeachable. It’s hard to imagine the textures having greater impact or precision, or the continuity and discontinuity being projected with greater concentration…Not a single sound emerges with indifference.



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. The luxurious CD box set contains an accompanying bonus DVD, on which Aimard shares his vast knowledge of and love for Messiaen's work from behind the piano.
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 destructed by man, Aimard views this cycle as "a musical refuge that resonates with an audience ever more concerned, expanded and affected."