IDAGIO | Liszt - Messiaen 7318590018033

Featuring

Fredrik Ullén
Franz Liszt
Olivier Messiaen

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Composer Biography

Liszt's late works, starting from 1881, are described as 'anti-Consolations' due to their austere musical style, full of dissonance and advanced harmonic language, which looks ahead to the twentieth century.

Composer Biography

Franz Liszt, initially destined for a career in the Church by his mother, was ordained as an Abbé in 1865, a decision met with incredulous contempt across Europe.

Recording & Production

This album was recorded in April and June 2009 at Nybrokajen 11, the former Academy of Music, in Stockholm, Sweden.

Performer Biography

Fredrik Ullén, the pianist on this recording, is also active as a neuroscientist, heading a research group at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm that studies the effects of musical training on the human brain.

Composition History

Liszt's Consolations, a piano cycle composed between 1844 and 1850, manifest a conscious rejection of the ostentatious grandezza of his virtuoso years.

Compositional Technique

Messiaen's Cantéyodjayâ features rhythmic innovations, including Hindu rhythms (deçî-tâlas) and chromatic scales of durations that accelerate and slow down, sometimes superposed in contrary motion.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Olivier Messiaen's entire body of work combines constructive rationality with a nature-related religiosity, with birdsong being a primary source of inspiration and an expression of 'religious joy'.