Messiaen: Turangalîla-Symphony

Gustavo Gimeno became music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 2020—so when he was thinking about the first album to record with his Canadian musicians, Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony immediately sprang to mind. After all, this is an orchestra that, in 1968, made one of the most important recordings of the work under the baton of its former music director Seiji Ozawa, and featuring the composer’s wife Yvonne Loriod on the piano. Turangalîla is also one of symphonic music’s most colossal creations, and a work of almost unfettered joy. And so, as Gimeno settles into his new role, and the orchestra basks in its recent centennial celebrations in 2022/23, recording Messiaen’s great orchestral work “just felt natural,” he tells Apple Music Classical. “It’s a homage to our own history, and I think 60 years after this first recording, we now have something to say again about this wonderful work. It’s about time.” French composer Olivier Messiaen was commissioned to write the piece by the great Russian conductor Serge Koussevitzky, and was given total artistic control over all aspects. Messiaen delivered his “hymn to joy” several years later, a sprawling, richly perfumed 10-movement work based on themes of life and love, scored for over 100 musicians including an enormous percussion section. Movements such as “Joy of the blood of the stars” and “Garden of the sleep of love” feature music of almost overwhelming rhythmic and harmonic intensity: love represented on a cosmic scale. “Turangalîla is dreamy and modern and classical at the same time,” says Gimeno. “It’s a bit ageless and very original. The words ‘love’ and ‘joy’ come to mind when I think of this work.” Unusually, Messiaen writes three solo parts into the score: gamelan (represented by celesta and vibraphone), piano (played magnificently by Marc-André Hamelin) and ondes Martenot, an extraordinary electronic instrument that emits an otherworldly, ethereal tone, perhaps these days most associated with mid 20th-century sci-fi movies. This recording benefits from one of today’s greatest exponents of the ondes Martenot, Nathalie Forget. “There is something very sexy and beautiful and suggestive about this instrument,” says Gimeno, “especially when Messiaen mixes and blends it with the strings—it gives light and warmth at the same time.” The difficulties of performing Turangalîla are almost matched by the challenges of recording its every detail. “One wants to capture the grandeur, its massive moments, big, colorful orchestration,” says Gimeno, “but there are many layers here, and you also want to bring those layers out as much as possible—but not at the expense of the music’s grandiosity.” These are challenges that the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and its recording engineers rise to with impressive skill, enabling Messiaen’s score to be heard in a strikingly bright light. It’s a recording that proves to the world that, under its talented new music director, this is an orchestral force to be reckoned with. “Thanks to projects like this, we can share our musicmaking all across the world, which gives us a great feeling of connecting with people. I am very proud of this recording.”