| Contemporary music |
Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux with Yvonne Loriod (1959): A landmark 3-CD set from Frémeaux & Associés
The 3-CD set runs to more than three hours of music, and for a listener new to Messiaen or a long-time devotee, it is a superb entry point.
Any review of this set has to start with the pianist. Yvonne Loriod (1924–2010) first came to Messiaen as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, and became his muse, his chosen interpreter, and later his second wife. Messiaen wrote for her hands, and the Catalogue d’oiseaux is among his most demanding piano works. She was its first interpreter, so this is not one reading among many: it is the sound of a piece being brought into the world by the person it was imagined for. You hear it in the playing. The technical demands are enormous: dense, flickering birdsong clusters, huge registral leaps, and long stretches of unbroken concentration. Yet nothing sounds like display. Loriod plays with total command and a naturalness that makes the writing feel inevitable. The birdsong has bite and brilliance, and the long, slow landscape passages breathe. The 1959 sound has the warmth and presence of its era, and the restoration lets you hear the piano with real depth.
The Catalogue d’oiseaux is not a set of bird imitations. Each piece portrays a habitat, a time of day, and a quality of light, with the birds as the living centre of each scene. Across the first two discs, Loriod takes us from the high Alps to marshland, river valley, forest night, and Mediterranean scrubland.
CD 1 opens with Le chocard des Alpes (the Alpine chough), a dazzling mountain-top scene. La bouscarle (Cetti’s warbler) brings the damp, tangled energy of a riverbank. The disc’s centrepiece is Le merle de roche (the rock thrush), which at over eighteen minutes is a vast, atmospheric canvas. L’alouette lulu (woodlark) and Le loriot (golden oriole) provide lighter, more radiant contrast. Then begins the first half of La rousserolle effarvatte (the reed warbler), a marsh-dawn portrait.
CD 2 continues that reed-warbler journey through the whole day and into darkness. Across both discs, the piece runs to nearly half an hour and is the longest sustained span in the cycle. The disc then moves into the shadows of La chouette hulotte (the tawny owl), one of the most atmospheric night-pieces in the piano repertoire, and the soaring La buse variable (the buzzard). It ends with a sequence of Mediterranean and southern scenes: Le merle bleu (blue rock thrush), Le traquet stapazin (black-eared wheatear), Le traquet rieur (black wheatear), and L’alouette calandrelle (short-toed lark).
What this set does especially well is keep you with the music over long distances. Played this way, the cycle stops being a catalogue and becomes a single, immersive listening experience.
CD 3: from the last bird to the end of time
The third disc widens the frame. It begins with Le courlis cendré (the curlew), the piece that closes the cycle, so the set holds all thirteen pieces of the Catalogue d’oiseaux. It continues with Oiseaux exotiques (1956), where Messiaen turns to birdsong from distant continents and treats it as orchestral colour. The set ends with the Quartet for the End of Time, composed in 1940 while Messiaen was a prisoner of war, and presented here in a 1957 recording made with the composer at the piano. It is one of the great chamber works of the century, and its eight movements are given complete. It includes Abîme des oiseaux, in which birdsong becomes a symbol of freedom and eternity, and the closing Louange à l’immortalité de Jésus, whose long, suspended lines seem to dissolve into silence. Hearing it after the Catalogue is illuminating: you realise that birds were part of Messiaen’s spiritual imagination long before he began notating them in the field.
As always with Frémeaux & Associés, the presentation is serious and thoughtful. The booklet essay by Patrick Frémeaux, available in French and English, places Messiaen in a lineage with the audio-naturalist Jean-Claude Roché, whose field recordings of birdsong Frémeaux has published extensively. Messiaen wrote birdsong into music, while Roché recorded it in the wild, and the essay treats these as two complementary acts of listening.
The essay also gives the reissue an urgent, contemporary meaning. In a world where birdsong is fading, listening to Messiaen becomes an act of memory and vigilance, a way of hearing what was once abundant and of measuring what is being lost. Under Jean-Baptiste Mersiol’s artistic direction, the historic master recordings (Vega 1956, 1957, 1959, and Club Français du Disque 1957) have been restored with that philosophy in mind.
Who is this set for?
- Messiaen enthusiasts, who get the reference recording of the Catalogue d’oiseaux by the pianist who inspired it.
- Piano-repertoire lovers, for whom this is one of the great monuments of the twentieth century.
- Birdwatchers and nature lovers, who will enjoy hearing a composer treat birdsong with scientific attention and artistic imagination.
- Newcomers to modern music, since the imagery makes this one of the most approachable ways into Messiaen’s world.
A great, fantastic 3-CD set, and a rewarding one. Yvonne Loriod’s authority is unmatched, the programme is generous and well-shaped, and the two companion works widen the perspective without diluting it. At 3 hours 21 minutes, it is an ideal companion for a long, quiet evening. It is highly recommended, and it deserves a place in any serious collection of twentieth-century music.
Frankie Pfeiffer
Editor in chief – PARIS-MOVE
PARIS-MOVE, September 19th, 2026
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Artistic Direction : JEAN-BAPTISTE MERSIOL
Label : FREMEAUX & ASSOCIES
3-CD set / Total duration: 3 hours 21 minutes
Tracklisting:
CD 1 – CATALOGUE D’OISEAUX – Première partie:
1.Le chocard des Alpes – Yvonne Loriod – 00:08:51 (1959)
2.La bouscarle – Yvonne Loriod – 00:10:15 (1959)
3.Le merle de Roche – Yvonne Loriod – 00:18:29 (1959)
4.L’alouette Lulu – Yvonne Loriod – 00:06:40 (1959)
5.Le loriot – Yvonne Loriod – 00:07:03 (1959)
6.La rousserolle effarvatte, Partie 1 – Yvonne Loriod – 00:19:36 (1959)
CD 2 – CATALOGUE D’OISEAUX – Deuxième partie:
1.La rousserolle effarvatte, Partie 2 – Yvonne Loriod – 00:10:04 (1959)
2.La chouette hulotte – Yvonne Loriod – 00:06:15 (1959)
3.La buse variable – Yvonne Loriod – 00:10:08 (1959)
4.Le merle bleu – Yvonne Loriod – 00:12:22 (1959)
5.Le traquet stapazin – Yvonne Loriod – 00:14:31 (1959)
6.Le traquet rieur – Yvonne Loriod – 00:09:02 (1959)
7.L’alouette calandrelle – Yvonne Loriod – 00:05:33 (1959)
CD 3 – CATALOGUE D’OISEAUX (Fin) – OISEAUX EXOTIQUES – QUATUOR POUR LA FIN DU TEMPS :
CATALOGUE D’OISEAUX (Fin) :
1.Le courlis cendré – Rudolf Albert – 00:09:30 (1956)
OISEAUX EXOTIQUES :
2.Oiseaux exotiques – Rudolf Albert – 00:13:54 (1956)
QUATUOR POUR LA FIN DU TEMPS :
3.Liturgie de cristal – Rudolf Albert – 00:02:15 (1957)
4.Vocalise pour l’ange qui annonce la fin du temps – Rudolf Albert – 00:03:55 (1957)
5.Abîme des oiseaux – Rudolf Albert – 00:03:55 (1957)
6.Intermède – Rudolf Albert – 00:05:03 (1957)
7.Louange à l’éternité de Jésus – Rudolf Albert – 00:01:50 (1957)
8.Danse de la fureur pour les sept trompettes – Rudolf Albert – 00:06:59 (1957)
9.Fouillis d’arcs-en-ciel pour l’ange qui annonce la fin du temps – Rudolf Albert – 00:07:51 (1957)
10.Louange à l’immortalité – Rudolf Albert – 00:07:24 (1957)