I Solisti del Vento & Muziektheater Transparant

Olivier Messiaen was born on 10th December 1908. Just four days short of one hundred years later, I Solisti del Vento and Muziektheater Transparant will pay tribute to him. Messiaen was a staunch Catholic whose main source of inspiration lay in the beauty of God's creation and particularly in birdsong. He regularly went on nature trips to record birdsong and incorporated transcriptions of this into his compositions. 'The Blackbird' from 1952 was the first work in which he used the birdsong imitations that are so typical of his work. This short work is wholly based on the song of the blackbird, which can be heard morning and evening in the Jura. He goes a step further in 'Oiseaux exotiques', a broad, swelling counterpoint of birdsong, in which each instrument plays a very individual, almost solo, role. We also hear a reference to birds in the masterly 'Quartet for the End of Time', namely in the title of part three, 'Abîme des oiseaux'. Nevertheless, this masterpiece is dominated by the oppressive atmosphere of a 1941 Silesian prisoner of war camp. It was in this spiritual emptiness that Messiaen set out in search of a music that could break the fetters of time. In 1945 he composed the song cycle 'Harawi' which forms the first part of the 'Trilogy of Love and Death' and is largely based on the legend of Tristan and Isolde. The word 'Harawi' comes from Quechua - the ancient language of Peru - and represents a love song that ends with the death of the lovers. Messiaen uses the contours of the Peruvian melodies and transforms them into his own melodic and modal idiom. Muziektheater Transparant creates a subtle staging for both 'Harawi' and 'Quatuor'. The evening concludes with 'Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum', an apocalyptic composition for wind instruments and percussion with suggestions of the religious and the supernatural. Messiaen composed the work to commemorate the dead of the two World Wars. It is a monumental, tumultuous composition, driven by Indian rhythms, birdsong and Gregorian melodies.