Olivier Martin

Composed in 1944 and first performed at the Salle Gaveau in Paris on 26 March 1945 by Yvonne Loriod, this is the second great pianistic cycle by Olivier Messiaen: a major work indeed, not only in the composer’s oeuvre but in the entire repertoire for solo piano. As we know, its origin is in the faith and spirituality of Olivier Messiaen, who described it as: ‘The Contemplation of the Child-God in the cradle, and the gazes fixed upon Him: from the inexpressible Gaze of God the Father to the multiple Gaze of the Church of love, also taking in the unheard Gaze of the Spirit of joy, the tender Gaze of the Virgin, of the Angels, of the Magi, and of those creatures that are immaterial or symbolic (Time, Extreme Height, Silence, the Star, the Cross).’ He continues: ‘It is a complex of sounds destined for perpetual variations, pre-existing in the abstract as a series, but very concrete and easy to recognize by their colours: a steely grey-blue traversed by bright red and orange, a mauve-tinted violet spotted with leather-brown and encircled in deep purple.’ The vision of this work transmitted by Martin Helmchen – a great piano virtuoso who is himself marked by a strong sense of spirituality – is another substantial contribution to the Messiaenic monument.

Qui connait le quintette avec piano de Gabriel Pierné ( 1860-1937 ) , hommage au pays basque comme beaucoup de ses oeuvres ? Oeuvre dense et puissante du niveau des 2 quintettes de Fauré, ce quintette est une magnifique synthèse entre ses maitres Cesar Franck ( le sérieux du premier mouvement et le lyrisme passionné du final ) et Jules Massenet ( la souplesse heureuse du second mouvement ). Sa date de composition ( 1917 ) explique sans doute les nuages noirs qui parsèment l'oeuvre.

Born into a Belgian family of instrument makers and musicians, Fétis became perhaps the most important music historian and musicologist of the 19th century, as well as an influential critic. Though his writings were encyclopedic, his compositional output was relatively sparse.

Évangiles, législations, mythes, contes populaires, épopées, apocalypses… La Bible est composée d'une extrême diversité de genres et de textes littéraires, dont l'incorporation au sein d'un "canon" unifié résulte d'une forte tradition interprétative, juive ou chrétienne. Plus qu'un livre, il s'agit d'une bibliothèque mondiale, dont l'influence s'exerce dans plusieurs domaines, comme la littérature, le cinéma et la culture politique. Olivier Millet explore ces relations qu'entretient la Bible avec notre monde contemporain, dans une réflexion stimulante et surprenante à bien des égards. …

A Baroque West Side Story, Tancrède tells of the absolute but impossible love between two young people brought together by their passion but separated by their origins. We are in the time of the Crusades: Tancredi is the champion of the Frankish army, and Clorinda the passionaria of the Saracen troops.
In the labyrinth of sentiments, the magic wand of the sorcerer Isménor confuses the issues, luring the two heroes into the enchanted forest to better prepare their downfall. Dances, choruses and arias merge in a subtle, poetic mixture, magnified by the dialogues sung in the grand tradition of French prosody and the tragédie lyrique. With Tancrède, André Campra established himself as one of the great opera composers between Lully and Rameau.