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Quarterly Review

To the Divine Art label and a hugely attractive CD, entitled ‘La Mer bleue’, with a dazzling impressionist seascape cover, offering the music of Olivier Messiaen, English modernist David Gorton – his ear-catching, expressive Ondine, and Szymanowski, his Sonata No.3, an example of 20^th-century lush romanticism, performed by the pianist Roderick Chadwick.

Messiaen – creator of the boundary-stretching, tonality-challenging, almost futuristic Turangalila Symphony – was obsessed by birdsong; and the CD offers devotees of 20^th-century music the chance to detach themselves from the ordinary world by switching their ‘play’ button to the first book of Catalogue d’oiseaux. Messiaen is hard to categorise. His oeuvre is informed by his intense Catholicism and his preoccupation with the mysteries of time and the universe, as in Turangalila. Roderick Chadwick takes us, step by step, through a ‘Catalogue’ like no other. He is the perfect interpreter of this magical and unique sound world.