Roderick Chadwick Presents a New Recording of Piano Music by Messiaen, Szymanowski, and David Gorton

Divine Art Recordings is delighted to announce a new album of piano music from English pianist Roderick Chadwick. Alongside the first book from Messiaen’s Catalogue d’Oiseaux are works by Karol Szymanowski and David Gorton.

Olivier Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux for solo piano evokes the sights and sounds of the French landscape, exploring time and memory across its two and a half-hour span. The diversity of Messiaen’s imagination can be heard in the progression from the sharp, solitary cries of the alpine chough to the fanfares of the golden oriole and harmonious, sapphire-blue sea along the Roussillon coast, where the headlands (in the composer’s words) ‘stretch into the sea like crocodiles’.

Each of the cycle’s seven livres suggests a variety of contexts, and on this new recording the first book is presented as an echo of the programming of the Parisian Domaine Musical, where it was first heard: old music, modern classic, and contemporary. The theme is Mediterraneanisation, journeys to and from water: the elusive moods of David Gorton’s Ondine point from the Messiaen towards the more human drama of Szymanowski’s Third Sonata, a pinnacle of the heady series of works that followed transformational trips to Italy and North Africa.

Roderick Chadwick can also be heard on the Métier and Divine Art labels in music by Michael Finnissy, Mihailo Trandafilovski, David Gorton, Mozart and Ole Bull, in partnership with Peter Sheppard Skaerved and the Kreutzer Quartet. He is the co-author, with Peter Hill, of Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux: from Conception to Performance (CUP).

Divine Art DDA 25209

Works:

• Olivier Messiaen: Catalogue d’Oiseaux, Book 1  (Le Chocard des Alpes ; Le Loriot ; Le Merle bleu)
• David Gorton:  Ondine
• Karol Szymanowski:  Piano Sonata No. 3

Details

• Recorded 17 and 18 December 2019 in Angela Burgess Recital Hall, Royal Academy of Music, London.
• Prospective release date: October 2020 (exact date to be confirmed)

Roderick Chadwick Recordings