- Concert à quatre
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Concert à quatre (Quadruple concerto) is one of the final works of the French composer Olivier Messiaen.
Written between 1990 and 1991, Messiaen originally intended the piece to have five movements. However, work on another large-scale piece, Éclairs sur l'au-delà…, prevented him from completing it before his death. It is written for four soloists: pianist, cellist, flautist and oboist.
As it stands, the work is in four movements, in which Messiaen draws inspiration from Mozart as well as his regular use of birdsong. Of the completed movements, Messiaen's widow, Yvonne Loriod, in conjunction with the composers George Benjamin and Heinz Holliger, orchestrated the second half of the first movement and the whole of the fourth. In the latter, Messiaen had intended to include a free meter sequence based on birdsong transcriptions. To write it, Loriod used sketches discarded from his opera Saint François d'Assise. She also added a chorus of bells from the same source[1]
The first movement features a Garden Warbler (piano solo), birds of New Zealand: blue-wattled crow, bush canary and Kakapo. The second movement is an orchestral transcription of Messiaen's own Vocalise of 1935, whilst the third features the Lyrebird (cello solo), the Musician Wren (flute) and the Garden Warbler in dialogue with the Natal Robin on percussion. The final completed movement features a wide range of birds including the Bell Bird, Golden Oriole, Capercaillie and Black-Throated Diver amongst many others.[2]
The premiere of the work took place on 26th September 1994, with Loriod (piano), Holliger (oboe), Mstislav Rostropovich (cello) and Catherine Cantin (flute) with the Orchestre de l'Opéra Bastille under Myung-Whun Chung. The four soloists and conductor were the piece's joint dedicatees. The same forces recorded the work for CD the following day.[3] The score was published by Editions Leduc in 2003[4].
Movements
- Entrée
- Vocalise
- Cadenza
- Rondeau
References
- ^ Concert à quatre, French liner notes, Deutsche Grammophon.
- ^ Griffiths, Paul (1995) Concert à quatre, liner notes, Deutsche Grammophon.
- ^ Gramophone magazine, January 1995
- ^ http://www11.ocn.ne.jp/~messiaen/work_list.html
Categories:- Compositions by Olivier Messiaen
- 1991 compositions
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