The music of Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) immediately attracts our attention with its rhythm, variety of colour, technical brilliance, energy, joy, and spirituality. It is incredibly well written for the instrument, even though its difficulties may deter many a player. Audiences are rarely indifferent to it, and for many it has a very powerful effect. In this disc, Angela Hewitt shows her affinity for French piano music, presenting the early Préludes of Olivier Messiaen, along with several of his Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus and Île de feu 1 and 2.

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Mystic: The Musical Visions of Olivier Messiaen is a sort of greatest-hits package for Messiaen that followed in the wake of the composer's death in 1992, though it did not appear until 1996. It is a Messiaen compilation that shapes certain movements taken out of longer works into a sort of easy listening context, which does provide some clues to the uninitiated as to how to access Messiaen, but in itself, it is a little disingenuous. There are no transcribed birdcalls, no "Chronochromie," nothing from "Quatour du le fin de temps," nor anything else that indicates what a challenging and intense composer Messiaen was. Just the prettiest parts of some pieces that are not in themselves necessarily very "pretty," couched in a sort of vaguely stated mysticism. The individual movements themselves are certainly well done and recorded—all of them are taken from the exemplary work of conductor Myung-Whun Chung for Deutsche Grammophon, recordings that Messiaen himself regarded as authoritative. But these pieces deserve to be heard in the context to which they belong, even if it is part of an unwieldy and sometimes messy 10-movement symphony such as the "Turangilila." However, as a disc with which to get one's feet wet in Messiaen, Mystic is not so bad—just bear in mind that there are a lot more ingredients to Messiaen's celestial banquet than this disc would imply. Uncle Dave Lewis, All Music Guide

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Described by the composer as "certainly the most substantial work I have composed in terms of duration and performing forces," Messiaen's oratorio is a strangely beautiful, and yet perplexing work.

Éclairs sur L'Au-delà, Messiaen's last musical creation, is an interesting anomaly: an orchestral work in no less than 11 movements. Commissioned by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in the summer of 1987, he completed it in 1991, shortly before his death at the age of 84. But most striking perhaps is that Éclairs is a Dantesque compositional journey of supernatural transcendence that culminates in temporal death and spiritual resurrection. Another captivating aspect of this work is its mesmerizing attention, depiction and transcription of bird-son. Messiaen employed Indian and Greek rhythms, notably in his monumental Turangalîla Symphonie (1946-1948)—a ten-movement piece where he makes use of the ondes martenot, an early electronic form of keyboard. Éclairs, on the other hand retains a strong impressionistic residue. While an unimpeded and direct grasp of immediate reality or aspects thereof are realized through an intuitive process, in musical terms this same understanding becomes one of the aims of impressionism.

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Pierre Boulez's performances of Olivier Messiaen's scores, especially the tough ones, are legendary, and "Chronochromie" is the composer's most complex and abstract work. Rising to the challenge, Boulez directs what is clearly its finest recording--not that there's been all that much competition! Of course, he has the great advantage of the Cleveland Orchestra--easily the world's finest ensemble in the field of contemporary music, and a DG recording of extreme clarity. The two couplings are less difficult, but let's not kid ourselves, this isn't a record for the casual listener looking for a pretty tune. It's great music, but it demands commitment.

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More than 50 composers from 13 different countries contributed to this collection of music with computers. Their pieces represent major directions of how avantgarde composers utilize the potential of new technology.

Of the numerous settings of Walt Whitman’s poetry to music, Sessions's When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd is generally agreed to be one of the very finest and most sensitive. His mature style—a highly personal, instantly recognizable mix of severity and control with passion and serenity—projects the poetry now in simple chordal declamation, now in the long, high-arched melodies of which he is the master, conveying wonderfully the feel and variety of Whitman’s lines. Over the years, Sessions’s elegy has taken its place as one of the cornerstones of the American choral repertory.

The music of Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) immediately attracts our attention with its rhythm, variety of colour, technical brilliance, energy, joy, and spirituality. It is incredibly well written for the instrument, even though its difficulties may deter many a player. Audiences are rarely indifferent to it, and for many it has a very powerful effect. In this disc, Angela Hewitt shows her affinity for French piano music, presenting the early Préludes of Olivier Messiaen, along with several of his Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus and Île de feu 1 and 2.

"The Polish Requiem" (Polskie Requiem) of Krzysztof Penderecki, for for a quartet of soloists, choir and symphony orchestra, combines modern idiom with tradition. Penderecki makes use of the vast possibilities of contemporary compositions in this missae pro defunctis (Mass for the Death), taken from the Church's Latin liturgy and Polish religious tradition. This exclusive 2-CD set also includes Oratorio "Dies Irae" dedicated to the Memory of Those Murdered at Auschwitz, for solo voices: soprano, tenor, bass; mixed choir and orchestra.

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Performed by the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir with various soloists, and composed in 1969-1970, Jutrznia I (Utrenya I: The Entombment of Christ) is a magnificent contemporary oratorio in five parts for two mixed choirs, five solo voices and symphony orchestra is a spine-tingling evocation of deep religious and otherworldly experience; the text is taken from Old Church Slavic writings concerning the Russian Orthodox liturgy of Great Saturday and Vespers of Good Friday. The elegant choral and orchestral material consists of tone clusters with major/minor chords embedded in them, wordless drones, chants in the rhythmically repeated chord style of the Russian Orthodox Church and ecstatic reaching for the highest notes in the soloists' range. Whispered speaking, percussive and brass punctuations, random rushing sounds, steely bow cymbal sustains, and more, take us into an inter-dimensional world of boundless interior and exterior. The second part of the diptych (of which Utrenya I: The Entombment of Christ is the first part), Jutrznia II (Utrenya II: The Resurrection of Christ), composed during 1970-71, is for five vocal soloists, boys choir, two mixed choirs and symphony orchestra. In contrast to Utrenya I, this work is one of unrestrained joy and wonder, the spirit of a more earthy world of two thousand years ago projected onto a contemporary landscape of cosmic dimensions. A remarkable and moving set of works.

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While Penderecki is best known for the visceral sonic assault of experimental works such as his Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1961), St. Luke Passion (Passio et mors Domini Nostri Jesu Christi secundum Lucam) is considered by many to be a landmark work in the history of twentieth century. What is still most striking about his Passion is how compellingly it blends avant-garde techniques—especially Penderecki's innovative textures and hovering tone clusters—with more traditional styles of choral and vocal writing. All of this contributes equally to the emotional resonance of music and story alike, and it's no wonder the Passion has become one of the composer's most renowned works.

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Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima (Tren ofiarom Hiroszimy in Polish) is a musical composition for 52 string instruments, composed in 1959 by Krzysztof Penderecki (b. 1933), which took third prize at the Grzegorz Fitelberg Composers' Competition in Katowice in 1960. The piece swiftly aroused tremendous interest around the world and made its young composer famous. The piece—originally called 8'37" (at times also 8'26")—applies the sonoristic technique and rigors of specific counterpoint to an ensemble of strings treated unconventionally in terms of tone production. "While reading the score," Tadeusz Zielinski wrote in 1961, "one may admire Penderecki's inventiveness and coloristic ingeniousness. Yet one cannot rightly evaluate the Threnody until it has been listened to, for only then does one face the amazing fact: all these effects have turned out to serve as a pretext to conceive a profound and dramatic work of art!" Indeed, the piece tends to leave an impression both solemn and catastrophic, earning its classification as a threnody. On October 12, 1964, Penderecki wrote, "Let the Threnody express my firm belief that the sacrifice of Hiroshima will never be forgotten and lost."

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Since his death in 1988, few composers of the 20th century have polarised opinion more radically than Scelsi; there are a number of significant figures, led by the late Gyorgy Ligeti and also including French spectralists such as Grisey and Murail, who have cited him as an important influence, while others have dismissed his music (around 120 pieces published, with more still in manuscript) as little more than the work of a charlatan. Certainly, the sense of holy writ that some of the more extreme Scelsi supporters promote and write about with such rapture is hard to stomach. At the same time, there is something undeniably powerful about the best of his music when you hear it performed with the devotional fervour he seemed to demand of his interpreters. One of the most famous of that committed group of musicians has been the singer Michiko Hirayama and her performance of the Canti di Capricorno, which Scelsi composed for her between 1962 and 1972. With its fractured monodies obsessing around a single pitch or small group of notes, Canti di Capricorno resonates in a way that suspends all conventional notions of musical time.