The Utah Symphony would be justified in regarding Des Canyons aux Étoiles … (From the Canyons to the Stars …) as its signature work. For it was the spectacular landscapes of the desert state that so enraptured Olivier Messiaen on a visit in 1973 that he decided the work he had been commissioned to compose to mark the US bicentenary in 1976 would be a celebration not only of its natural beauties and colours, but also of the birds that inhabit it. Fifty years after that visit, the Utah orchestra and its music director Thierry Fischer performed Messiaen’s longest orchestral work in the very canyons that prompted the epic score, and subsequently made this recording.
In the 12 movements of Des Canyons, depictions of the Utah landscapes and, inevitably for Messiaen, the feelings of religious wonder that they inspired alternate with musical portraits of the birds – “God’s musicians” as he describes them – that sing there or sometimes elsewhere in the world. Each location and each bird is precisely identified in the titles of the movements; there’s Cedar Breaks and the Gift of Awe, Bryce Canyon and the Red-Orange Rocks, The Orioles, The Wood Thrush and (an African bird) The White-Browed Robin-Chat, and movements too that hint at the great beyond to which so much of Messiaen’s music aspires, such as the final Zion Park and the Celestial City.
A piano and a horn lead this celebration; two of the “bird” movements are piano solos, while the horn’s unaccompanied Interstellar Call opens the second of the work’s three parts. Jason Hardink, the Utah Symphony’s principal keyboard player, projects Messiaen’s piano writing as vividly and idiomatically as anyone could want, while the horn soloist is no less than Stefan Dohr, the principal of the Berlin Philharmonic. Fischer ensures that their superb contributions fit perfectly into what he projects as a vast musical canvas, and that the orchestral playing is fabulously precise too, so that the performance is easily a match for the fine recordings of Des Canyons aux Etoiles …, particularly those conducted by Myung-whun Chung and Reinbert de Leeuw, already available.
This week’s other pick
Messiaen’s birds also provide the linking thread through Souvenirs d’Oiseaux, pianist Roderick Chadwick’s two-disc Divine Art anthology. It’s the second instalment in a series in which Chadwick is interleaving the seven volumes of the Catalogue d’Oiseaux with other piano works. This set includes pieces from books 2 to 5 of Messiaen’s great cycle, including the centrepiece of the series, La Rousserolle Effarvatte (The Reed Warbler) which takes the whole of the fourth book; in between them there’s music by Grieg and Debussy, Betsy Jolas, Sadie Harrison and Julian Anderson. The juxtapositions aren’t always convincing, though Chadwick’s playing is keenly focused; competition from complete versions of the Catalogue on disc is fierce, too.
