Search - Olivier Messiaen, Christopher Bowers-Broadbent :: Olivier Messiaen: Méditations sur le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité

Incandescent

05/04/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Messiaen's organ music is like no other kind of music; it stands alone. This lengthy 1969 work is the most intriguing Messiaen I've ever heard. Great shards of sound, whispered bird songs, Gregorian themes harmonized in the composer's special language, and incredible atmospherics are the most obvious features, but it goes far beyond what words can describe.
This music is both solemn and frightening. It runs the gamut of emotions, and in the end leaves the listener with a sense of wonder and mystery. The usual top-notch engineering from ECM certainly helps. The final chord of the first piece alone is worth the price of this CD; one of the most incredible sounds I've ever heard from any instrument. I've had this album for well over a year, and it still tears me to shreds; more than that, I feel I'm only just beginning to scratch the surface of it."

Scary...

Philip Z. Andrews | Coral Gables, Florida United States | 03/18/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"A muted dread, cowered in a dark corner of an overimposing cathedral is how I can best describe a reaction of someone listening to this work. Messiaen was an organist and a devout catholic. One cannot help but imagine a manner of liturgy expressed in the choppy, sentence-like phrasing here. To say this is a horror flick's sound track may be trite, especially because it would trivialise Messiaen's distinct language, a very unique one it is. He grapples with something beyond reach, that may be true of most of his music. The rhythm is instantly recognizeable as his own. Anyone who already knows his work will be able to understand his unique language, but even if you don't it may be worth your while - but only if you're willing to listen to this disc more than eight times."

Messiaen's at times Obtuse, Spiritual Universe

Grady Harp | Los Angeles, CA United States | 06/18/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Olivier Messiaen (1908 - 1992) was a unique 20th century artist, a profoundly religious man who was a composer, and organist, and an ornithologist (he believed birds to e the greatest musicians). His works for piano, for chorus, for symphony, and for his own favorite instrument, the organ, have been studied by many other composers but to this date none have achieved the degree of mysticism that was Messiaen's mark on the world of music. As other music historians have noted 'It is one of the paradoxes of Olivier Messiaen's creative life that his musical mind was one of organisation, mechanism and rationale, and yet his music found its inspirational basis in the admitted uncertainty, abstractness and ambiguity of faith. That concept is thrust into the foreground in the organ works.'



Méditations sur le mystère de la Sainte Trinité, for organ, I/49 is one his grandest compositions and one that requires not only skillful keyboard manipulation but also makes demands of the available organ stops in the mighty instruments found, gratefully, more often in the symphony halls of the world. But for this listener the organ works of Olivier Messiaen are best heard in the acoustic of a cathedral. This impressive sonic achievement, with Christopher Bower-Broadbent as performer and interpreter, is in great part due to the engineers of ECM. The sound reverberates in even the small home setting, allowing the listener to hear the spatially significant clouds of sound and color the composer desired. Here are also his use of the songs of birds that flutter through the composition subtly ad those single note melodies that seem to relate to nothing if not to the divine. A splendid recording , this. Grady Harp, June 10"