Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Messiaen's Turangalila... Wow!


Heard/saw an incredible rendition of Messiaen's Turangalila Symphonie at Carnegie Hall last Friday. Alex Ross blogs about it here. The ten-part, 75-minute piece features a dizzyingly virtuosic piano part, a haunting low-end fanfare that returns periodically and gave me goose bumps each time I heard it, and the eerie Ondes Martenot. Unfortunately, I had a hard time hearing the Ondes during particularly boisterous moments, of which there were many. That's about my only complaint, though. What a treat to hear Turangalila live!


Very informative demo video of how the incredible Ondes Martenot works here.

2 comments:

Alex Hawkins said...

Sounds great! It's a real ambition of mine to hear the piece live...I have an old vinyl copy which is absolutely great though...

There's a nice book by Robert Sherlaw Johnson (IIRC) about Messaien, in which I seem to remember him mentioning an unpublished piece called 'Jeux d'Eau' or something similar for 6 Ondes Martenot...Something like that in the back of my mind. That would be a crazy thing to hear..!

Harris Eisenstadt said...

will look up the book thanks for the rec

6 ondes would be great