Messiaen: Orchestral Works (Live) Chor und Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks & Kent Nagano

• Olivier Messiaen (1908 - 1992): La transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, I/48, Premier septénaire:
• 1Messiaen: La transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, I/48, Premier septénaire: I. Recit evangelique (Live)02:51
• 2Messiaen: La transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, I/48, Premier septénaire: II. Configuratum corpori claritatis suae (Live)05:55
• 3Messiaen: La transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, I/48, Premier septénaire: III. Christus Jesus, splendor patris (Live)06:52
• 4Messiaen: La transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, I/48, Premier septénaire: IV. Recit evangelique (Live)02:29
• 5Messiaen: La transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, I/48, Premier septénaire: V. Quam dilecta tabernacula tua (Live)08:41
• 6Messiaen: La transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, I/48, Premier septénaire: VI. Candor est lucis aeternae (Live)01:35
• 7Messiaen: La transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, I/48, Premier septénaire: VII. Choral de la sainte montagne (Live)04:05
• La transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, I/48, Deuxième septénaire:
• 8Messiaen: La transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, I/48, Deuxième septénaire: VIII. Recit evangelique (Live)03:25
• 9Messiaen: La transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, I/48, Deuxième septénaire: IX. Perfecte conscius illius perfectae generationis (Live)16:43
• 10Messiaen: La transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, I/48, Deuxième septénaire: X. Adoptionem filiorum perfectam (Live)07:38
• 11Messiaen: La transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, I/48, Deuxième septénaire: XI. Recit evangelique (Live)04:33
• 12Messiaen: La transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, I/48, Deuxième septénaire: XII. Terribilis est locus iste (Live)06:33
• 13Messiaen: La transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, I/48, Deuxième septénaire: XIII. Tota trinitas apparuit (Live)15:13
• 14Messiaen: La transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, I/48, Deuxième septénaire: XIV. Choral de la lumière de gloire (Live)07:54
• Poemes pour Mi, I/17b, Livre 1:
• 15Messiaen: Poemes pour Mi, I/17b, Livre 1: No. 1, Action de grâces (Live)06:05
• 16Messiaen: Poemes pour Mi, I/17b, Livre 1: No. 2, Paysage (Live)01:52
• 17Messiaen: Poemes pour Mi, I/17b, Livre 1: No. 3, La maison (Live)01:43
• 18Messiaen: Poemes pour Mi, I/17b, Livre 1: No. 4, Épouvante (Live)02:49
• Poemes pour Mi, I/17b, Livre 2:
• 19Messiaen: Poemes pour Mi, I/17b, Livre 2: No. 5, L'épouse (Live)02:31
• 20Messiaen: Poemes pour Mi, I/17b, Livre 2: No. 6, Ta voix (Live)03:26
• 21Messiaen: Poemes pour Mi, I/17b, Livre 2: No. 7, Les deux guerriers (Live)01:45
• 22Messiaen: Poemes pour Mi, I/17b, Livre 2: No. 8, Le collier (Live)04:05
• 23Messiaen: Poemes pour Mi, I/17b, Livre 2: No. 9, Prière exaucée (Live)03:23
• Chronochromie, I/43:
• 24Messiaen: Chronochromie, I/43: I. Introduction (Live)03:25
• 25Messiaen: Chronochromie, I/43: II. Strophe I (Live)01:45
• 26Messiaen: Chronochromie, I/43: III. Antistrophe I (Live)03:11
• 27Messiaen: Chronochromie, I/43: IV. Strophe II (Live)01:36
• 28Messiaen: Chronochromie, I/43: V. Antistrophe II (Live)05:45
• 29Messiaen: Chronochromie, I/43: VI. Épôde (Live)04:35
• 30Messiaen: Chronochromie, I/43: VII. Coda (Live)02:41
• Total Runtime02:25:04

Info for Messiaen: Orchestral Works (Live)

Few performers are more familiar with the musical language of the French composer Olivier Messiaen than the American conductor Kent Nagano. Nagano has had Messiaen's orchestral works and oratorios in his program for several decades now, and he also participated in the world premiere of “Saint François d'Assise”, Messiaen's only opera. During the year 1982 Nagano spent his time with Messiaen in Paris, where not only an artistic relationship but also a close personal one developed between the two musicians. BR-KLASSIK has now released three masterpieces by the French composer with the magical sound, presented by Kent Nagano to the Munich concert audience in recent years as conductor of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks: the oratorio “La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ" (The Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ) for chorus, seven solo instruments and orchestra, the song cycle "Poèmes pour Mi" for soprano and orchestra, as well as "Chronochromie" for large orchestra. These three live recordings document outstanding artistic events from the Munich concert program of June 2017, July 2018 and February 2019.

Kent Nagano was a close associate of the French composer Olivier Messiaen, whose music is notable for its sense of mysticism and sensuous sonorities. Few conductors know Messiaen’s works as well as Nagano, who is now continuing his Messiaen cycle with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra with one of his mentor’s most radical pieces, the colourful Chronochromie for orchestra. Premiered at the Donaueschingen Festival in 1980, it was introduced to Munich audiences two years later by Pierre Boulez. Its title is a portmanteau word derived from the ancient Greek terms for “time” and “colour” – Messiaen was a great believer in the theory of synaesthesia and ascribed particular tone colours to all his rhythmic models. Chronochromie demands a huge battery of percussion instruments and draws its strength from its pulsating rhythms, while the strings contribute an array of birdcalls. Bruckner’s works are no less rooted in Catholicism than Messiaen’s, and it makes sense, therefore, for Nagano to programme Bruckner’s Mass No. 2 in E minor alongside Messiaen’s orchestral study. The Mass No. 2 was first performed in 1869 at an open-air concert to mark the inauguration of the Votive Chapel at Linz’s planned Cathedral. Such were the circumstances of its first performance that the choir could be accompanied only by a wind band, in this case the winds of the Linz Military Band. It is this original scoring that lends the work its very special tone colour. But the work requires no vocal soloists, presenting the Bavarian Radio Chorus with a grateful challenge and allowing its members to savour the score’s indebtedness to Palestrina’s vocal polyphony in all its transcendent beauty.

Jenny Daviet, soprano
Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Kent Nagano, conductor

Kent Nagano
is renowned for interpretations of clarity, elegance and intelligence. He is equally at home in music of the classical, romantic and contemporary eras, introducing concert and opera audiences throughout the world to new and rediscovered music and offering fresh insights into established repertoire. Since September 2006 he has been Music Director of Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and became Artistic Advisor and Principal Guest Conductor of Gothenburg Symphony in 2013. In September 2015, Kent Nagano takes up the position of General Music Director of the Hamburg State Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra. At the Hamburg State Opera he will start his first season with the premiere of Berlioz‘ Les Troyens, the world premiere of Toshio Hosokawas Stilles Meer and also Messiaen’s symphony Turangalîla choreographed by John Neumeier.

At the Bayerische Staatsoper, where he was General Music Director from 2006 – 2013, he commissioned new operas from Jörg Widmann Babylon, Wolfgang Rihm Das Gehege and Unsuk Chin Alice in Wonderland and new productions there have included Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina, Idomeneo, Eugene Onegin, Ariadne auf Naxos, Die Schweigsame Frau, Les Dialogues des Carmélites, St François d’Assise, Wozzeck, George Benjamin’s Written on Skin and Der Ring des Nibelungen. With the Bayerisches Staatsorchester Nagano has toured throughout Europe and in Japan and together they have recorded Bruckner Symphonies No. 4, 7 and 8.

In September 2011, Kent Nagano and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal inaugurated their new concert hall La Maison Symphonique. Highlights with the orchestra include the complete cycles of Beethoven and Mahler symphonies, Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, concert versions of Wagner’s Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde, Das Rheingold, Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher, Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise, and concert series featuring the works of Dutilleux (2010-2011) and Boulez (2011-2012). Nagano has taken the orchestra on a coast-to-coast tour of Canada and also to Japan, South Korea, Europe and South America. Their recordings together include the Juno award winning album “Ideals of the French Revolution” with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and Beethoven’s Piano Concertos Nos. 4 & 5, as part of a recording of all the Symphonies by Beethoven. The Symphonies No. 3, 6, 8 & 9 have also been released by Sony Classical/Analekta.

As a much sought after guest conductor, Nagano has worked with most of the world’s finest orchestras including the Vienna, Berlin and New York Philharmonics, Chicago Symphony, Dresden Staatskapelle and Leipzig Gewandhaus. He has an ongoing relationship with Sony Classical and has also recorded for Erato, Teldec, Pentatone and Deutsche Grammophon as well as Harmonia Mundi, winning Grammy awards for his recordings of Busoni’s Doktor Faust with Opéra National de Lyon, Peter and the Wolf with the Russian National Orchestra and Saariaho’s L’amour de Loin with the Deutsches Symphonieorchester Berlin.

A very important period in Nagano’s career was his time as Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, from 2000-2006. He performed Schönberg’s Moses und Aron with the orchestra (in collaboration with Los Angeles Opera), and took them to the Salzburg Festival to perform both Zemlinsky’s Der König Kandaules and Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten, as well as to the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden with Parsifal and Lohengrin in productions by Nikolaus Lehnhoff. Recordings with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin for Harmonia Mundi include repertoire as diverse as Bernstein’s Mass, Bruckner’s Symphonies Nos. 3 & 6, Beethoven’s Christus am Ölberge, Wolf Lieder, Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 and Schönberg’s Die Jakobsleiter and Friede auf Erden, as well as Brahms’s Symphony No. 4 and Schönberg’s Variationen für Orchester Op. 31. In June 2006, at the end of his tenure with the orchestra, Kent Nagano was given the title Honorary Conductor by members of the orchestra, only the second recipient of this honour in their 60-year history.

Kent Nagano became the first Music Director of Los Angeles Opera in 2003 having already held the position of Principal Conductor for two years. His work in other opera houses has included Shostakovich’s The Nose (Staatsoper Berlin), Rimsky Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel (Châtelet, Paris), Hindemith’s Cardillac (Opéra national de Paris), Dialogues des Carmélites (Metropolitan Opera) and at the Salzburg Festival Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Zemlinsky’s Der Koenig Kandaules, Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten and the world premiere of Saariaho’s L’amour de loin. Other world premieres include Bernstein’s A White House Cantata and operas by Peter Eötvös (Three Sisters), and John Adams (The Death of Klinghoffer and El Niño).

Born in California, Nagano maintains close connections with his home state and was Music Director of the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra from 1978-2008. His early professional years were spent in Boston, working in the opera house and as assistant conductor to Seiji Ozawa at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He played a key role in the world premiere of Messiaen’s opera Saint François d’Assise at the request of the composer, who became a mentor and bequeathed his piano to the conductor. Nagano’s success in America led to European appointments: Music Director of Opéra National de Lyon (1988-1998) and Music Director of the Hallé Orchestra (1991-2000).

Booklet for Messiaen: Orchestral Works (Live)