Cynthia Millar,'s husband: "What did you do at work today dear?" "I played, the Ondes Martenot in Turangalila" "That's nice, what are you doing tomorrow?" "I'm playing the Ondes Martenot in Turangalila" "Lovely, how about next week?" "I'm playing the Ondes Martenot in Turangalila" "Next month?" "I'm playing the Ondes Martenot in Turangalila" "Wonderful, shall we go to the Bahamas next year?" "Sorry, I'm playing the Ondes Martenot in Turangalila"
LMAO. It's true, though. I've seen her play it live, and also on, I believe, 4 UA-cam videos. I think she's also on one of the recordings I have (not sure). Oh well, not the worst way to make a living!
I. Introduction. Modéré, un peu vif [0:48] II. Chant d’amour 1, Modéré, lourd [7:31] III. Turangalîla 1, Presque lent, rêveur [15:58] IV. Chant d’amour 2, Bien modéré [21:30] V. Joie du Sang des Étoiles, Vif, passionné avec joie [32:56] VI. Jardin du Sommeil d’amour, Très modéré, très tendre [39:53] VII. Turangalîla 2, Un peu vif, bien modéré [52:02] VIII. Développement d’amour, Bien modéré [55:45] IX. Turangalîla 3, Bien modéré [1:07:25] X. Final, Modéré, presque vif, avec une grande joie [1:12:38]
I just watched this again! What must people who are new to Messiaen think of this experience? It's obviously very modern, but it's full of hummable tunes, major chords, and pulsating rhythms. It's as if somebody splattered a big ol' can of Hollywood melodrama all over le Sacre du Printemps. It's also nothing like anything Messiaen had composed before -- nothing in his oeuvre really points to it. Most classical audiences would be fairly comfortable with Les Offrandes Oubliees or L'Ascension. Things don't really start to get weird until Trois Petites Liturgies, but even that weirdness pales when exposed to the harsh light of Turangalila. One wonders what was going on in Messiaen's mind when he was composing this piece. It really does divide his output into two distinct halves. Of course, his piano music was surging ahead on the strangeness front more so than his orchestral music. Vingt Regards is pretty strange, and it dates from 1944, preceding the beginning of Turangalila by a couple of years. Perhaps it all boils down to Yvonne Loriod. Perhaps Messiaen had all this stuff floating around in his head, but he couldn't imagine anyone actually playing it until she drifted into his life. It's also incredible to think that she was still a teenager when Messiaen began composing for her -- she was only 19 when she and Messiaen premiered Visions de l'Amen together, 20 when she premiered Vingt Regards, and 24 when Turangalila premiered. The whole situation is almost beyond belief. Somebody should make a proper movie about those two -- "Le maitre et sa muse" or something like that.
I remember distinctly hearing this piece for the first time. I was listening to WCRB in Boston in my second year of medical school and it was about two or three in the morning. It was my first real experience with anything 'modern' in classical music and it was a revelation. At that point in my life Bach and Beethoven and Mozart and Schubert and Brahms and Haydn, etc. were all comfortable experiences. Now, over 30 years later, the Turangalila is kind of old hat... 'Lulu' is in my top three or four operas, etc. I will always remember and be grateful for that first experience and I will always love this piece. As you wondered about listener's first experiences with Messiean I just wanted to pass on mine...
I'm new to Messiaen, but not new to music of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries. So it doesn't have the same astonishment as when I heard The Rite of Spring for the first. But my reaction is much like when I hear Stravinsky again for the twentieth time: it sounds like perfection, without a note out of place.
Great performance of a magnificent work by probably the most under-valued composer of the 20th Century. Pity about the direction and the camera work of the film. Much better hr these days. Thank you for sharing.
"Undervalued" --- I have to admit that, sadly, I agree with this sentiment. I can't remember which music critic said it, but he said something like "200 years from now, people will remember two composers from the 20th century: Mahler and Messiaen."
Nice to actually SEE this performed, but it would be nice if the video/camera director had a basic knowledge of this score. I would like to see the closeups of the ondes martenot player when she actually is playing...All those great glissandos missed...Too bad... Study the score next time. :)
Not only the Ondes, the director has an uncanny ability to focus on the wrong instruments most of the time - and other times, the camera movenets are completely random...
@@vonFisch 07:36 they are running across the picture, 07: 50 you can see their silhouettes as they are leaving the hall. Later some grannies are holding their heads/ears, horror in their faces, crazy, I have no explanation why they bought the tickets for Messiaen, he has not some "easy" pieces... :D
@@WonderLula Oh correct, good eye, but it's impossible to say why they are moving/leaving, I would not judge them. As for grannies holding their heads, that is just silly. I keep seing old people like that when I go (used to go...) to concerts, they probably have tickets for the whole season and not a lot to do, so they keep coming to concerts they know nothing about. It's ok with me, as long as they are not coughing...
Yes, I agree re: good performance, bad recording. The Piano sounds like it's on stage, the Ondes Martenot via Skype, and the orchestra placed in the men's toilets.
What was the recording engineer thinking? I have only played movement 6, but after that didn't want to hear any more. Did he think, "Oh, there's a piano; it must be a piano concerto. Let's whack the piano up as high as it will go."? It's certainly not the pianist's fault - you can see where he is clearly playing pianissimo, and the sound is coming out forte. In this movement the ondes Martenot is supposed to be the dominant instrument; instead it's the piano. The woodwind is so far back that at times when the melodic line is supposed to pass to the flute, it just stops. Too many instruments are inaudible. A case of a very good performance spoiled by the recording.
+Lang Jones : Listening via a good DAC and Grado headphones, the recording comes through as well-detailed, with the brass and crucial percussion forces given due weight. The majority of Messiaen's oeuvre is written for keyboard instruments so I have no problem with a vivid piano presence…I agree that the Ondes should perhaps have 'gone up to eleven' - this can sometimes be an issue with live performance too, so I wonder if this gorgeous instrument deserves a modern audio re-think. In any case, this is by far the best version on UA-cam.
Yeah that movement was pretty bad. The piano was just overwhelming which sounds unnatural when he's playing so softly. The louder movements were better.
3 years later feel compelled to respond. If this were an analog record/CD would be a better/fairer assessment of the recording sound quality. At best this is a 720p UA-cam video not fair to hear the dynamic of any orchestra (lots of compression..). Instruments like woodwinds often suffer the most (due to lower volumes..). 2 cents..
The first time I heard this monumental work, conducted by Andre Previn, there were actually boos from the audience. It is an amazingly complex and multi-faceted piece of music.
the peasants always boo something they don't understand, they are only able to take "mary had a little lamb" complexiting for their poor brains to be able to comprehend. This is, truly, a great work.
The first time I heard it live (Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Matthias Bamert with Peter Donohoe and, of course, Cynthia Miller) I thought the hall balcony was going to collapse under the stomping and cheering. I don't think I've ever witnessed a more enthusiastic reception in 50 years of concert-going.
The Ondes Martenot is a bit tame here. In the joyful rage of the last movement it gets suffocated by the orchestra. In my opinion it has to be more prominent.
This is an amusing video in the sense that the action is often not where the camera is pointed. I particularly enjoyed the extended meditation on the, alas, silent triangle at 46:16. It wasn't played, but the triangulist did give it a little shake.
Despite the poor camera work and slightly strange recording this has to be the best live Turangalila I've ever seen. Paavo Järvi's total command of the score and the orchestral forces is quite superb and Stewart Goodyear is just amazing. The violinist with the glasses looks like she's mesmerised by him particularly at 30:53 and 38:28
One of the greatest pieces ever written and it can't sell in Frankfurt in 2013. For those scoring from home, it was premiere by Leonard Bernstein and the Boston Symphony in 1949. Save that little piece of trivia for your next appearance on Jeopardy.
Yes, and Bernstein apparently hated every minute of it. Oh well, Messiaen got the last laugh there. For me, Messiaen didn't really find his feet until the late 60s with La Transfiguration and Meditations, and then the true apotheosis came in the 70s with Des Canyons aux Etoiles....
Anyone remember the hype for the first Lord of the Rings movie before it came out? Well back then I fell asleep to this symphony, having just watched the 70s LOTR animation, and OH MAN did I see some messed up version of The Fellowship of the Ring. I kept waking up thinking "That was f***ed up" then falling asleep again--back into the muddled Middle-earth, I even came across Sauron at one point, in this weird cottage the size of a mountain, and Treebeard was constantly on fire as he came and went. I've listened to the Turangalîla many, many times since. It's so epic and involved and different in rythmn as well as tone, I'm in absolute awe of this masterpiece.
Damn I wish I was there 😫 this was amazing even with the distortion of having being recorded and then reproduced by a speaker, can’t imagine if it was real
Wow! This is the best rendition of Turangalila that I've ever heard, and that includes Chung. Also, Stewart Goodyear absolutely nails it -- the most thrilling piano rendition of Turangalila that I've heard, and that includes Muraro. That crazy "statue theme" cadenza at the end of "Joie du sang des etoiles" (38:26) should be played with total abandon and at the fastest humanly possible speed, and Goodyear delivered! I heard Thibaudet play this with the Seattle Symphony a few years ago, and that was very good, but this just blows it out of the water.
I watched the cadenza. Whoa. This time, though, check out the violin player's expression (38:27). "This has been an amazing trip." Then watch the woman in the audience at 35:54 through 36:35. She's thinking "my ticket says 'Samuel Barber Adagio for Strings'?" Thanks for your insights. I'm a baby.
He must not have hated them that much since he married a pianist and was himself an organist. Dont worry, he knew his wife (Yvonne Loriod) had the skills to play anything he wrote!
At first, it sounds like a big Mess(iaen). But, as I listen to it again, the genius of Messiaen is revealed. The ears and brain need to get adapted to this new way of expressing feelings. Then, you discover it's a masterpiece.
I've thought for many years that if we could just get Messiaen's music into the ears of more people, then his music would be much more popular. The people (like some of us here) who love it love it a lot. I simply can't imagine life without Messiaen now. I don't feel that way about any other composer, except JS Bach.
This really IS a great recording! Fabulous stuff!...Jarvi and his crew do a great job of bringing the whole thing to life!...now to take a look at Dutoit...
Whenever i listen to Messiaen's music, i recall with great fondness the cafe on K-Road in Auckland New Zealand where the pianist owner barista introduced me to [in 2001] (not this sinfonie because i was carrying a Cornell University Ornithology Lab CD of Bird Music) Messiaen's Catalogue of the Birds.
And for some reason, which is unknown to me, this music makes me think of the South Pacific Ocean [at first i thought it was the musical South Pacific, but I checked and the music is not so close as i first thought].
La version de Charles Dutoit à la baguette avec J.Y. Thibaudet au piano est remarquable également. Ce qui je ne comprends pas c'est que les commentaires ont été désactivés - ça arrive souvent ici pour une pièce instrumentale de cet qualité et, qui plus est, "classique" ?
Sagenhaft toll musiziert; der Pianospieler ist herausragend und Orchester und Dirigent kongeniale Partner. Ich muss es öfter hören um es ganz zu verstehen.👍👍👍
A very good performance indeed. This work has gotten to be a standard repertoire piece. Kent Nagano and the Berlin Philharmonic on Teldec is a standout recording. This performance is worthy of a recommendation. Hope they are recording it. If not, it's right here !!
Yes, but Messiaen wasn't mad. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more methodical person. I would recommend the writings of Cheong Wai-Ling from the Chinese University of Hong Kong to see just how orderly Messiaen's harmonic practices were, for example.
@@docsketchy I agree completely--I should have been more clear; "mad" only in his desire to completely reject convention. Perhaps the most terrifying thing about Messiaen is that he was very, very sane. To have a moniker like "the atomic bomb of contemporary composers" given to you, even during your lifetime, in Messiaen's case, is as well-earned as it is accurate beyond words; Messiaen's Turangalila is not played. It is detonated.
@@buserror1 Agree. For some detonations, you should listen to the first of the organ Meditations from 1969, and the 3rd, 9th, 12th and 13th movements of La Transfiguration, also from 1969. For the first, I recommend Olivier Latry. For the second, I recommend ONLY Dorati and the National Symphony and Westminster Choir on the original 1972 recording. Later recordings suck, especially Chung. Only Dorati got that piece right. There are parts of the 9th movement that sound like the creation of the universe, complete with Messiaen's famous blue-orange lava, etc, but only on the Dorati recording. On the (much more available and modern) Chung recording, it sounds like people sitting down to afternoon tea, barely touching polite little gongs as they do so. It is one of my life's missions to get more people into Messiaen, but Chung isn't making it any easier. As you said, Messiaen's music should terrify.
Messiaen wrote the piano part for Yvonne Loriot and he married her after the death of his first wife. No idea what that proves but it's an interesting bit of trivia.
Not necessarily... I didn't see a "Euro" sign. It might be an inventory tag for certain orchestral instruments, i.e. those not owned by the performers.
Sorry, but I don't think I'd like to have a beer with Messiaen: he'd prattle on for an hour and a half about stuff I really can't unhear. Maybe a half an hour, but no more. To paraphrase yet another person who's undoubtedly smarter than i am - Ça ha des jolis moments mais des mauvais quarts d'heur.
I've never heard a Turangalîla performance so well expressed in such a phenomenal recording like this one. What a music machine, Frankfurt SRO with Järvi at the helm. Splendid!
Of course, he's got it memorized anyway. You can't play this kind of music at this level without memorization. He's just got the score there for psychic security and for not missing cues. When I saw this piece live, it was Jean-Yves Thiboudet playing with a stack of loose sheets. I thought that was pretty risky.
@@docsketchy I'm sure you're right but I would have thought that a pianist playing something as complex and demanding as this would have wanted as few distractions as possible. Even the mighty Joanna MacGregor had a page turner when she played Turangalila at the BBC Proms a few years ago.
@@davebarclay4429 I just checked, and Yuja Wang used a page-turner with Dudamel and the OSB. I'm a little surprised, as she seems to memorize everything. In her case, she may have been sight-reading it for the performance.
Actually, I listened to both of my recordings of Turangalila today -- Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Orchestra, and Myung-Whun Chung and the Bastille Opera Orchestra. The Chung rendition is very beautiful, and very well recorded. I would say that the balance of the instruments is just about perfect, although I like the piano to be a bit more out front, as it tends to disappear a bit in the Chung. And, of course, Loriod is probably the perfect interpreter of this piece -- after all, it was written for her. However, Goodyear absolutely attacks it here, and I like it a lot. The Rattle rendition is a bit rough, actually, but makes a nice change every once in a while. This one here blows it away on all fronts.
Kent Nagano and the Berlin Philharmonic on Teldec is a great recording. Very powerful and well-recorded. Chung's recording is more restrained but very good. This performance is sounding very good early on. I remember the first time I heard it. It was Ozawa with the Toronto Symphony. One of the first recordings (late1960's). It was good but not as well-realized or powerful as it has become recently. I have not heard Rattle. I would think that it is good. ARG still puts Nagano at the top of the list of recommended recordings. It's a major repertoire work now. People like these big, cosmic showstoppers! I think it is an excellent work.
Tschechisch: Osvěžující nádhera!! Messiaen by si možná dobře rozuměl s jiným géniem jménem Frank Zappa! :-) ...Leonard Bernstein musel být tehdy nadšený, když toto dílo "náhodou" dostal k nastudování!
Stimmt. Messiaen ist der nächste Schritt die "größte" Linie Bach, Mozart, Beethoven (usw.). Aus dieser Zeit, denke ich, Messiaen und Stockhausen wirlkich überleben sollten.
"Ach du lieber, mein schatz"!!! I've watched many wonderful videos of this GREAT ORCHESTRA playing some marvelous music!!! But this piece of "GARBAGE" made me very reluctantly give this video a THUMBS DOWN, only because of the piece of the "music" that was played! Why did the great musicians of this very fine orchestra waste their time learning to play it??? It certainly wasn't worth their effort! It had nothing remotely resembling "melody" that might be sung, or hummed, or whistled! How it hurts me to say all this! Can't the conductor hear this with his God given ears when he chose this piece??? WOW! I'd take the conductor's baton away from him & break it! AND he's one of my favorite conductor's too! "Gesundheit"!
Maybe, just maybe, you simply don't understand this music. This is one of the greatest orchestral pieces of the 20th century, loved by many music lovers and musicians. Music is so much more than just pretty melodies you can whistle (though this piece does contain beautiful melodies).
Cynthia Millar,'s husband: "What did you do at work today dear?"
"I played, the Ondes Martenot in Turangalila"
"That's nice, what are you doing tomorrow?"
"I'm playing the Ondes Martenot in Turangalila"
"Lovely, how about next week?"
"I'm playing the Ondes Martenot in Turangalila"
"Next month?"
"I'm playing the Ondes Martenot in Turangalila"
"Wonderful, shall we go to the Bahamas next year?"
"Sorry, I'm playing the Ondes Martenot in Turangalila"
LMAO. It's true, though. I've seen her play it live, and also on, I believe, 4 UA-cam videos. I think she's also on one of the recordings I have (not sure). Oh well, not the worst way to make a living!
I hope there is somebody lined up to replace her when she retires - a world without Turangalila doesn't bear thinking about!
yuya wang.
ppppp
yu.
EASYTIGER10 is
I. Introduction. Modéré, un peu vif [0:48]
II. Chant d’amour 1, Modéré, lourd [7:31]
III. Turangalîla 1, Presque lent, rêveur [15:58]
IV. Chant d’amour 2, Bien modéré [21:30]
V. Joie du Sang des Étoiles, Vif, passionné avec joie [32:56]
VI. Jardin du Sommeil d’amour, Très modéré, très tendre [39:53]
VII. Turangalîla 2, Un peu vif, bien modéré [52:02]
VIII. Développement d’amour, Bien modéré [55:45]
IX. Turangalîla 3, Bien modéré [1:07:25]
X. Final, Modéré, presque vif, avec une grande joie [1:12:38]
Thank you
I just watched this again! What must people who are new to Messiaen think of this experience? It's obviously very modern, but it's full of hummable tunes, major chords, and pulsating rhythms. It's as if somebody splattered a big ol' can of Hollywood melodrama all over le Sacre du Printemps. It's also nothing like anything Messiaen had composed before -- nothing in his oeuvre really points to it. Most classical audiences would be fairly comfortable with Les Offrandes Oubliees or L'Ascension. Things don't really start to get weird until Trois Petites Liturgies, but even that weirdness pales when exposed to the harsh light of Turangalila. One wonders what was going on in Messiaen's mind when he was composing this piece. It really does divide his output into two distinct halves. Of course, his piano music was surging ahead on the strangeness front more so than his orchestral music. Vingt Regards is pretty strange, and it dates from 1944, preceding the beginning of Turangalila by a couple of years. Perhaps it all boils down to Yvonne Loriod. Perhaps Messiaen had all this stuff floating around in his head, but he couldn't imagine anyone actually playing it until she drifted into his life. It's also incredible to think that she was still a teenager when Messiaen began composing for her -- she was only 19 when she and Messiaen premiered Visions de l'Amen together, 20 when she premiered Vingt Regards, and 24 when Turangalila premiered. The whole situation is almost beyond belief. Somebody should make a proper movie about those two -- "Le maitre et sa muse" or something like that.
I remember distinctly hearing this piece for the first time. I was listening to WCRB in Boston in my second year of medical school and it was about two or three in the morning. It was my first real experience with anything 'modern' in classical music and it was a revelation. At that point in my life Bach and Beethoven and Mozart and Schubert and Brahms and Haydn, etc. were all comfortable experiences. Now, over 30 years later, the Turangalila is kind of old hat... 'Lulu' is in my top three or four operas, etc. I will always remember and be grateful for that first experience and I will always love this piece. As you wondered about listener's first experiences with Messiean I just wanted to pass on mine...
Thanks. You write well.
Nice essay
I'm new to Messiaen, but not new to music of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries. So it doesn't have the same astonishment as when I heard The Rite of Spring for the first. But my reaction is much like when I hear Stravinsky again for the twentieth time: it sounds like perfection, without a note out of place.
Omg, that was my first thought while hearing this. I hear a lot of Le Sacre Du Printemps influences in the introduction
You know it's getting serious when a german orchestra breaks out the piston valve trumpets
Several members of the audience had to be treated for PTSD (post-turangalîla stress disorder).
7:34 if your Turangalila is not scaring away the casual date night crowd, you are doing it wrong
Exactly. I was once playing Bruckner in my office and somebody told me how beautiful it was. So I switched to Schnittke. No more compliments.
Great performance of a magnificent work by probably the most under-valued composer of the 20th Century. Pity about the direction and the camera work of the film. Much better hr these days. Thank you for sharing.
"Undervalued" --- I have to admit that, sadly, I agree with this sentiment. I can't remember which music critic said it, but he said something like "200 years from now, people will remember two composers from the 20th century: Mahler and Messiaen."
Nice to actually SEE this performed, but it would be nice if the video/camera director had a basic knowledge of this score. I would like to see the closeups of the ondes martenot player when she actually is playing...All those great glissandos missed...Too bad... Study the score next time. :)
Not only the Ondes, the director has an uncanny ability to focus on the wrong instruments most of the time -
and other times, the camera movenets are completely random...
and when s/he does do a closeup, s/he focusses on the loudspeakers, not the instrumentalist! What a clanger.
Unbelievable stupidity. Most Frankfort Radio Symphony videos are much better
The Turangalîla with Dudamel, Yuja Wang, and Cynthia Millar has lots of closeups of the ondes Martenot:
ua-cam.com/video/xOnZ1-sOCwo/v-deo.html
😎🎹
Is there anything better than The Joy of the Blood of the Stars?! What a cracking piece. In my top 5 pieces ever. Thank you for posting!
It IS the top 5 pieces ever, all being played at the same time!
V. Joie du Sang des Étoiles, Vif, passionné avec joie [32:56]
At 9:26: Bar code label on the wood block! Nice touch.
メシアンのトランガリラは以前、小沢征爾さんの指揮で視聴したことがあります
この動画ではいささか規模が異なる感を持ちますが、若干のコメントを願います
メシアンはフランスの現代作曲家、巨匠とされた方で、お弟子さんが集い、のちの現代音楽若手に影響を与えた、このように理解しております
トランガリラの魅力、オンドマルトノの響きとビアノの響きが、オーケストラ音響のなかで効果をあげていること
ビアノの小刻みな打楽器風の演奏、これにオンドマルトノの天をつくような響きとが上手く配分され、尚且つ高音域を中心に書かれたオーケストレーションのなかに、華やかな色彩を添えていること
往年の現代曲に見られがちな暗さが全くなく、なにか神秘的な音の渦を作っていくことに、今なおこの曲が魅力を失わない妙味があるのでは、私はこのように実感しております
音列にもとづいた作曲技法なのですが、この曲はウェーベルンのような俳句型ではなく、長大なオーケストラ曲であることにメシアンの卓越した技量を感じます
つまり、現代音楽の長大化をこの作曲が試みたこと
これは日本の武満徹さんも、メシアンの作曲技法、つまり現代曲の長大化を考えるヒントになっていたのではとも思えてなりません
武満徹作品が独特の色彩感を持っていること、これはメシアンの作品が色彩的であることに共通項を見出だすことが出きるからです
武満作品がドイツ音楽から離れフランス音楽に傾倒していったこと、これはメシアンとの出会いがあると、多くの解説者は論じておりますが
メシアン、武満の色彩感覚に共通した、独特の音楽感覚を指摘することができるでしょう
両者は特異な作曲家であったこと、これは現代音楽若手作曲家が数学的な理論にばかり傾倒していったのとは異なることを挙げねばならないでしょう
大変、音への色彩 感に長けた作曲家であったと、振り返ざる得ません
田中英世
24年8月26日
I am wondering what was expecting these guys who are leaving after 5 minutes. They didn't know what are they going to listen or what?
they don't know anything i guess
You saw somebody leave?
@@vonFisch 07:36 they are running across the picture, 07: 50 you can see their silhouettes as they are leaving the hall. Later some grannies are holding their heads/ears, horror in their faces, crazy, I have no explanation why they bought the tickets for Messiaen, he has not some "easy" pieces... :D
@@WonderLula Oh correct, good eye, but it's impossible to say why they are moving/leaving, I would not judge them. As for grannies holding their heads, that is just silly. I keep seing old people like that when I go (used to go...) to concerts, they probably have tickets for the whole season and not a lot to do, so they keep coming to concerts they know nothing about. It's ok with me, as long as they are not coughing...
@@vonFisch About 7:35, they run from right to left in front of the stage. Then a new camera angle shows them leaving through a door. How embarassing!
Yes, I agree re: good performance, bad recording. The Piano sounds like it's on stage, the Ondes Martenot via Skype, and the orchestra placed in the men's toilets.
clearly you need a better set of headphones or speakers
The original comment 🤣🤣🤣
this brothel music got me hard
What was the recording engineer thinking? I have only played movement 6, but after that didn't want to hear any more. Did he think, "Oh, there's a piano; it must be a piano concerto. Let's whack the piano up as high as it will go."? It's certainly not the pianist's fault - you can see where he is clearly playing pianissimo, and the sound is coming out forte. In this movement the ondes Martenot is supposed to be the dominant instrument; instead it's the piano. The woodwind is so far back that at times when the melodic line is supposed to pass to the flute, it just stops. Too many instruments are inaudible. A case of a very good performance spoiled by the recording.
Lang Jones that is mostly a problem int that movement specifically, though it is true that the ondes martenot were always too low
+Lang Jones : Listening via a good DAC and Grado headphones, the recording comes through as well-detailed, with the brass and crucial percussion forces given due weight. The majority of Messiaen's oeuvre is written for keyboard instruments so I have no problem with a vivid piano presence…I agree that the Ondes should perhaps have 'gone up to eleven' - this can sometimes be an issue with live performance too, so I wonder if this gorgeous instrument deserves a modern audio re-think. In any case, this is by far the best version on UA-cam.
Yeah that movement was pretty bad. The piano was just overwhelming which sounds unnatural when he's playing so softly. The louder movements were better.
3 years later feel compelled to respond. If this were an analog record/CD would be a better/fairer assessment of the recording sound quality. At best this is a 720p UA-cam video not fair to hear the dynamic of any orchestra (lots of compression..). Instruments like woodwinds often suffer the most (due to lower volumes..). 2 cents..
@@lilybevan4803 lol.. 'gone up to eleven' Spinal Tap' reference in an odd place.. Cheers..!
Listening to this piece makes me feel really good. I had to share.........
The first time I heard this monumental work, conducted by Andre Previn, there were actually boos from the audience. It is an amazingly complex and multi-faceted piece of music.
the peasants always boo something they don't understand, they are only able to take "mary had a little lamb" complexiting for their poor brains to be able to comprehend. This is, truly, a great work.
The first time I heard it live (Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Matthias Bamert with Peter Donohoe and, of course, Cynthia Miller) I thought the hall balcony was going to collapse under the stomping and cheering. I don't think I've ever witnessed a more enthusiastic reception in 50 years of concert-going.
Who in god’s name goes to a concert knowing what’s on the program only to boo when they’re hearing something they don’t like
The Ondes Martenot is a bit tame here. In the joyful rage of the last movement it gets suffocated by the orchestra. In my opinion it has to be more prominent.
この曲はオンド・マルトノ奏者が主役の一人なのだが、映像がピアニストばっかりでオンド・マルトノ奏者がほとんど映っていないのが残念。
This is an amusing video in the sense that the action is often not where the camera is pointed. I particularly enjoyed the extended meditation on the, alas, silent triangle at 46:16. It wasn't played, but the triangulist did give it a little shake.
Actually you are not looking and listening very sharply. The triangle IS being played at that moment.
Despite the poor camera work and slightly strange recording this has to be the best live Turangalila I've ever seen. Paavo Järvi's total command of the score and the orchestral forces is quite superb and Stewart Goodyear is just amazing. The violinist with the glasses looks like she's mesmerised by him particularly at 30:53 and 38:28
She got the best seat in the house... I noticed that too. LOL
One of the greatest pieces ever written and it can't sell in Frankfurt in 2013. For those scoring from home, it was premiere by Leonard Bernstein and the Boston Symphony in 1949. Save that little piece of trivia for your next appearance on Jeopardy.
Yes, and Bernstein apparently hated every minute of it. Oh well, Messiaen got the last laugh there. For me, Messiaen didn't really find his feet until the late 60s with La Transfiguration and Meditations, and then the true apotheosis came in the 70s with Des Canyons aux Etoiles....
Anyone remember the hype for the first Lord of the Rings movie before it came out? Well back then I fell asleep to this symphony, having just watched the 70s LOTR animation, and OH MAN did I see some messed up version of The Fellowship of the Ring. I kept waking up thinking "That was f***ed up" then falling asleep again--back into the muddled Middle-earth, I even came across Sauron at one point, in this weird cottage the size of a mountain, and Treebeard was constantly on fire as he came and went. I've listened to the Turangalîla many, many times since. It's so epic and involved and different in rythmn as well as tone, I'm in absolute awe of this masterpiece.
Damn I wish I was there 😫 this was amazing even with the distortion of having being recorded and then reproduced by a speaker, can’t imagine if it was real
クイズノックから 8:19
Wow! This is the best rendition of Turangalila that I've ever heard, and that includes Chung. Also, Stewart Goodyear absolutely nails it -- the most thrilling piano rendition of Turangalila that I've heard, and that includes Muraro. That crazy "statue theme" cadenza at the end of "Joie du sang des etoiles" (38:26) should be played with total abandon and at the fastest humanly possible speed, and Goodyear delivered! I heard Thibaudet play this with the Seattle Symphony a few years ago, and that was very good, but this just blows it out of the water.
Never heard of Stewart Goodyear! He really does the work full justice! ...so do the other keyboard people! FABULOUS!
Listen to his Beethoven sonatas.....UNIQUE and refreshing (not offbeat)..
I watched the cadenza. Whoa. This time, though, check out the violin player's expression (38:27). "This has been an amazing trip."
Then watch the woman in the audience at 35:54 through 36:35. She's thinking "my ticket says 'Samuel Barber Adagio for Strings'?"
Thanks for your insights. I'm a baby.
Let's face it: Turangalila is an INSANE piece of music. What was Messiaen thinking?!?!?
Better than Chung? Maybe. They're both really good.
Absolutely outstanding! Messiaen must have hated keyboard players 😆but he didn't make the piano part difficult enough to deter Stewart Goodyear! 😃
He must not have hated them that much since he married a pianist and was himself an organist. Dont worry, he knew his wife (Yvonne Loriod) had the skills to play anything he wrote!
@@alexsturrock9602 Maybe he and his wife didn't get along that well? 😀
@@theodoremann1461 interesting thought but no, I'm afraid they were really smitten with each other. 🤷♂️
@@alexsturrock9602 Glad to hear it!
I like the couple leaving at the beginning of the second movement. Bloody Philistines!
At first, it sounds like a big Mess(iaen). But, as I listen to it again, the genius of Messiaen is revealed. The ears and brain need to get adapted to this new way of expressing feelings. Then, you discover it's a masterpiece.
This is one of those rare things which make me laugh and cry at the same time.
docsketchy Have you ever been tickled to death with a feather duster?
It certainly is a "new" language, certainly invented by Messiaen.
I've thought for many years that if we could just get Messiaen's music into the ears of more people, then his music would be much more popular. The people (like some of us here) who love it love it a lot. I simply can't imagine life without Messiaen now. I don't feel that way about any other composer, except JS Bach.
Sound is mixed like a piano concerto, orchestra was so far and the ondes martenot were almost unaudible.
i heard this piece first in cologne... i never saw the concert house so full as on this day!
I have heard better music in a traffic jam
@@charlesesders6270 Where can we find such traffic jams?
14:26 my favorite moment
This really IS a great recording! Fabulous stuff!...Jarvi and his crew do a great job of bringing the whole thing to life!...now to take a look at Dutoit...
Whenever i listen to Messiaen's music, i recall with great fondness the cafe on K-Road in Auckland New Zealand where the pianist owner barista introduced me to [in 2001] (not this sinfonie because i was carrying a Cornell University Ornithology Lab CD of Bird Music) Messiaen's Catalogue of the Birds.
And for some reason, which is unknown to me, this music makes me think of the South Pacific Ocean [at first i thought it was the musical South Pacific, but I checked and the music is not so close as i first thought].
La version de Charles Dutoit à la baguette avec J.Y. Thibaudet au piano est remarquable également. Ce qui je ne comprends pas c'est que les commentaires ont été désactivés - ça arrive souvent ici pour une pièce instrumentale de cet qualité et, qui plus est, "classique" ?
i love this piece!!!!
... and at 38:18 Stuart Goodyear turns over two pages of his score - meaning that he just played the last two crazy pages from memory...
Sagenhaft toll musiziert; der Pianospieler ist herausragend und Orchester und Dirigent kongeniale Partner. Ich muss es öfter hören um es ganz zu verstehen.👍👍👍
Messiaen with this music gives Masterwork
A ravishing, cogent reading that vies for first place.
How can people leave after the first movement? They don't deserve the ticket.
Dickheads are a fact of life unfortunately
Bravo!
That theme at 23:33 is absolute divinity.
+An Xe : This is the Turangalila theme, to me the beautiful equal of the great melodies of La Mer and Daphnis & Chloe...
And 58:28
A very good performance indeed.
This work has gotten to be a standard repertoire piece.
Kent Nagano and the Berlin Philharmonic on Teldec is a standout recording.
This performance is worthy of a recommendation. Hope they are recording it. If not, it's right here !!
I have Nagano's recording and love it but this is probably the best live performances of Turangalila I've seen
Messiaen's on my short list of history's best mad geniuses... This symphony alone qualifies him.
Yes, but Messiaen wasn't mad. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more methodical person. I would recommend the writings of Cheong Wai-Ling from the Chinese University of Hong Kong to see just how orderly Messiaen's harmonic practices were, for example.
@@docsketchy I agree completely--I should have been more clear; "mad" only in his desire to completely reject convention. Perhaps the most terrifying thing about Messiaen is that he was very, very sane.
To have a moniker like "the atomic bomb of contemporary composers" given to you, even during your lifetime, in Messiaen's case, is as well-earned as it is accurate beyond words; Messiaen's Turangalila is not played. It is detonated.
@@buserror1 Agree. For some detonations, you should listen to the first of the organ Meditations from 1969, and the 3rd, 9th, 12th and 13th movements of La Transfiguration, also from 1969. For the first, I recommend Olivier Latry. For the second, I recommend ONLY Dorati and the National Symphony and Westminster Choir on the original 1972 recording. Later recordings suck, especially Chung. Only Dorati got that piece right. There are parts of the 9th movement that sound like the creation of the universe, complete with Messiaen's famous blue-orange lava, etc, but only on the Dorati recording. On the (much more available and modern) Chung recording, it sounds like people sitting down to afternoon tea, barely touching polite little gongs as they do so.
It is one of my life's missions to get more people into Messiaen, but Chung isn't making it any easier. As you said, Messiaen's music should terrify.
trippy
Gracias Fernando por compartir. Una maravilla desconocida para mí y unas interpretaciones geniales....
Wonderful all
The last movement is joyous!
Say what you will, but Vladimir Putin can lead an orchestra as no other.
I'm glad I'm not the only one.
В маленькой Европе трудно отличить финский этнос от северного русского.
Как Вы только русских от китайцев отличаете?
Theres Nothing else like it!
A great slogan for a breakfast cereal.
Ah oui c est beau! C est EXIGEANT mais c est BEAU!
Merci.
ondes mixed loud asl in this one, good choice. such a good performance
This could be an ordeal for the musicians, especially the pianist. But I really appreciate them laying it on the line. The effort is worth it.
Messiaen wrote the piano part for Yvonne Loriot and he married her after the death of his first wife. No idea what that proves but it's an interesting bit of trivia.
Finally comes the greatest symphony in the latter half of the 20th century. Bravo Järvi! Bravo the Symphony Orchestra!
+notaire2
But written during the first half of the 20th century
+MrBohuslav Thanks. I should have said "in the mid 20th century".
1948
Thanks for your detailed reply.
first created by Bernstein in 1949
i think the bassoonist was called in at the last minute! i love the ecstatic points, especially 23:33.
best recording of all versions
I kind of like the ineptitude which results in leaving the price tag on the woodblock :)
Not necessarily... I didn't see a "Euro" sign. It might be an inventory tag for certain orchestral instruments, i.e. those not owned by the performers.
Astonishing performance 🌹
So beautiful❤
-- Grande symphonie. Planant. --
you perfect!!!
wonderful
The Ondes Martenot at 4:47 ... absolutely fantastic!
great rendition, bad filming.
Wonderful music
Großartig!!!!!!
Sorry, but I don't think I'd like to have a beer with Messiaen: he'd prattle on for an hour and a half about stuff I really can't unhear. Maybe a half an hour, but no more. To paraphrase yet another person who's undoubtedly smarter than i am - Ça ha des jolis moments mais des mauvais quarts d'heur.
Magnifique!
I've never heard a Turangalîla performance so well expressed in such a phenomenal recording like this one. What a music machine, Frankfurt SRO with Järvi at the helm. Splendid!
The woman in the background at 1:16:39 should better go home and listen to some easy Mozart oder Beethoven ;)
So, you suppose that listen to Messiaen is "more difficult" than Mozart or Beethoven?
I like Beethoven, but to describe Mozart, easy might be the best word
Stewart Goodyear's page-turning is nearly as impressive as his playing. If I'd been in his position I think I'd have had somebody to turn for me!
Of course, he's got it memorized anyway. You can't play this kind of music at this level without memorization. He's just got the score there for psychic security and for not missing cues. When I saw this piece live, it was Jean-Yves Thiboudet playing with a stack of loose sheets. I thought that was pretty risky.
@@docsketchy I'm sure you're right but I would have thought that a pianist playing something as complex and demanding as this would have wanted as few distractions as possible. Even the mighty Joanna MacGregor had a page turner when she played Turangalila at the BBC Proms a few years ago.
@@davebarclay4429 I just checked, and Yuja Wang used a page-turner with Dudamel and the OSB. I'm a little surprised, as she seems to memorize everything. In her case, she may have been sight-reading it for the performance.
in reply to john belarus: birdsong rhythm is not metronomic. anyway, the "good orchestra" should be following the soloist!
como puedo bajar gratis la sinfonia?''
no se como se hace para bajarla
descarga tubemate amigo y la baja.
Beautiful rendition !
Thanks a lot
This a wonderful performence that Jon’s a couple of others I’m hearing a different parts of ensemble that I have overlooked
Each time if hear it I kike it more and more. Now I´ve just arrived at the "wow!!!" level.
38:14
Chung Myung Whun plays this better
No he doesn't.
Ma Mere L'oye dudamel made the best performance with simon bolivar and yuja wang
Actually, I listened to both of my recordings of Turangalila today -- Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Orchestra, and Myung-Whun Chung and the Bastille Opera Orchestra. The Chung rendition is very beautiful, and very well recorded. I would say that the balance of the instruments is just about perfect, although I like the piano to be a bit more out front, as it tends to disappear a bit in the Chung. And, of course, Loriod is probably the perfect interpreter of this piece -- after all, it was written for her. However, Goodyear absolutely attacks it here, and I like it a lot. The Rattle rendition is a bit rough, actually, but makes a nice change every once in a while. This one here blows it away on all fronts.
Kent Nagano and the Berlin Philharmonic on Teldec is a great recording. Very powerful and well-recorded.
Chung's recording is more restrained but very good.
This performance is sounding very good early on.
I remember the first time I heard it.
It was Ozawa with the Toronto Symphony. One of the first recordings (late1960's). It was good but not as well-realized or powerful as it has become recently.
I have not heard Rattle. I would think that it is good. ARG still puts Nagano at the top of the list of recommended recordings.
It's a major repertoire work now.
People like these big, cosmic showstoppers!
I think it is an excellent work.
He might conduct it
Tschechisch: Osvěžující nádhera!! Messiaen by si možná dobře rozuměl s jiným géniem jménem Frank Zappa! :-) ...Leonard Bernstein musel být tehdy nadšený, když toto dílo "náhodou" dostal k nastudování!
Une musique un peu spéciale et très mystique de la moitié du vingtième siècle
In the eleventh movement I m reminded of .dance of the Fury
Stimmt. Messiaen ist der nächste Schritt die "größte" Linie Bach, Mozart, Beethoven (usw.).
Aus dieser Zeit, denke ich, Messiaen und Stockhausen wirlkich überleben sollten.
13:33 これも“HIROSHIMA”に
パクらせたとこなのかな
Turanga Leela approves this
献立表メシアンが、シェフェールさんと、応援して応募が❓️❤️
What happened with the camera? 😂🙄
29:53 solo
30:46 wow..
52:03 astonishing pianist.
58:24 1:00:30 1:02:45
"Ach du lieber, mein schatz"!!! I've watched many wonderful videos of this GREAT ORCHESTRA playing some marvelous music!!! But this piece of "GARBAGE" made me very reluctantly give this video a THUMBS DOWN, only because of the piece of the "music" that was played! Why did the great musicians of this very fine orchestra waste their time learning to play it??? It certainly wasn't worth their effort! It had nothing remotely resembling "melody" that might be sung, or hummed, or whistled! How it hurts me to say all this! Can't the conductor hear this with his God given ears when he chose this piece??? WOW! I'd take the conductor's baton away from him & break it! AND he's one of my favorite conductor's too! "Gesundheit"!
Maybe, just maybe, you simply don't understand this music. This is one of the greatest orchestral pieces of the 20th century, loved by many music lovers and musicians. Music is so much more than just pretty melodies you can whistle (though this piece does contain beautiful melodies).
why are you so angry, and why do you think everyone else is wrong about appreciating this music? is it too dissonant for you?
killing the pianist.......
Horrisonus. Snobs.
Who is the pianist?
32:57 Joie du Sang des étoiles (pas assez en transe)
I wonder if messiaen ever did drugs? Because his music is sure indicator of that. It's so off kilter & psychedelic 😆 lol
Bendiciones a Alemania mi sangre
🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩
Bravo from Japan
메시앙, 중 10악장
現代 メシアン