Word: turangalila
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...conductor he most resembles is his hero Pierre Boulez, guiding his players through the most intricate rhythms with unflappable aplomb. In 1985 Salonen signed an exclusive contract with CBS, now Sony Classical, and since then has issued a steady stream of albums (the best so far: Messiaen's formidable Turangalila-Symphonie and Grieg's Peer Gynt music). Already he is one of the few living maestros who can sell the standard repertoire on the strength of his name alone...
MUSIC Messiaen's powerful Turangalila is recorded anew...
...Turangalila, though, was his coming-out party, a stentorian announcement that postwar music need not be synonymous with Webernism. It's a holy terror, but a hell of a good time...
Ordinarily, the immediate postmortem period is the time when a composer's music and his reputation go underground with him. Not Messiaen's. Consider, for example, a new Deutsche Grammophon release of the sprawling Turangalila- Symphonie, in a stunning performance by conductor Myung-Whun Chung and the Bastille Opera Orchestra. Written in 1948, this vast, hermetic work is a powerful introduction to Messiaen's intricate, private world of symbol and allusion, both sacred and profane...
...have to know any of this to enjoy Turangalila. Written for large orchestra, including an eerie electronic instrument called the ondes martenot (memorably employed by Maurice Jarre in the score for Lawrence of Arabia), the symphony is like some fabulous beast howling in the collective unconscious of Western civilization. Heard live, it shakes, it roars and it rattles the fundament, compelling the listener to confront unspoken fears; even on compact disc, the force is still with it. And all courtesy of a mild- mannered French church-organ player who liked nothing better than to walk in the woods and listen...