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January 12, 2024 37 mins

Pianist Rolf Hind introduces one of the epics of piano music. A heady mix of virtuoso composing and devout faith, Olivier Messiaen's 20 reflections on the infant Jesus, Vingt regards sur l'infant Jésus, brings us a two-hour deep dive of awesome power and beautiful stillness.

Listening time 38 mins (plus music 2hrs 8')

Music here on Youtube, played live in concert by Rolf Hind. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W34IlnsDX8&t=4521s]

Be quick and go see Rolf play this at Durham Cathedral.

Visit Rolfhind.com for more information on our excellent guest!

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi, I'm Steve Thomas, this is Cacophony.

(00:10):
Let's dive into some great music, but first a warning.
This episode contains talk and music of spirituality and religion that some listeners may find
transcendent or overwhelming.
Welcome to 2024 and Cacophony's first episode for a while, and it's a great one.

(00:31):
This is perfect music for a bit of post-Christmas January reflection, the Vingt Regards sur
l'enfant Jésus or 20 looks at Visions of - Reflections on the Infant Jesus by the French composer
Olivier Messiaen.
It's a collection of 20 pieces for solo piano and it's appropriately epic.
It's got everything, so be prepared for shock and/or beauty and silent contemplation.

(00:54):
It's got angels and shepherds too though, just perhaps as we might not expect them.
It's a big piece to talk about, and I'm really happy that the pianist and composer
Rolf Hind happened to have it on his music stand and was up for explaining it for us,
and playing a few things along the way.
Before getting to Messiaen and Jesus, I asked Rolf about his journey into music.

(01:17):
As a child, I was interested in performance generally. I was interested in being an actor.
And so before I learnt the piano, I took part in a few shows, local to me, probably the
apogee of which was being Oliver, in Oliver.
Oh, cool.
In the operatic players of Sutton's production of Oliver.

(01:38):
Do you still remember all the songs?
Pretty much, yeah. And we still got...
My mum still has the photos. Give me and my gold velvet outfit.
That's when Oliver goes posh. He has a velvet outfit and a gold velvet hat in this version.
I love that outfit. I used to sing in the church choir.
I had some singing lessons with a friend of the family who lived in the road.

(02:03):
It was actually a very good professional singer and teacher.
So those things came together. I was interested in being in shows and the theatre.
we were given the piano when I was nine and I just started teaching myself for a while and I was singing and
Then I started to learn the piano from my choir master
Was it clear thing beginning that you were good? Yeah, I think I think so. I mean I I start to remember

(02:29):
I think I progressed quite quickly. I was very interested
It became my thing it nobody else in my family does it although they're very supportive
And I actually always liked that dynamic personally, you know, it's the thing I do.
So I went when I was a smaller child to live in a very large house where there was plenty of room to go and make noise and play the piano.

(02:49):
And I did that for a few years.
And then adolescence comes along in teen years and I was much more self-conscious about performing on stage, which is what I had been interested in doing.
So I got much more into composing and playing just on my own.
I suppose in retrospect there were a couple of times when I won things and then I got a

(03:11):
scholarship to the Royal College of Music and it was kind of a surprise. I wasn't thinking
I'd get one but then I did so we'd started to think well maybe this is what I'm going
to do and up till then I was just very into it, I was just enjoying it. The sense of any
direction only comes with retrospect for me.
Yeah. And what would you say music means to you?

(03:34):
Well, it's a constant thread throughout my life.
And for example, now I've reached an age where my husband and I talk about retiring.
And the thought of not doing music and retiring in that sense is frightening, actually.
I don't want to. I haven't quite reached that age yet, but even contemplating it.
Because I both compose and play the piano.

(03:56):
I have periods when I'm doing one more meal than that.
And then I miss one of them.
The public experience of performing in concert is quite different
from what is mostly a quite a lonesome activity as a composer.
I feed into each other a lot.
You might certainly learn things about composing from playing.
From playing interesting music.

(04:17):
I didn't compose anything for about 15, getting on for 20 years
when I was just playing.
although as a kid I would very much have thought of myself as both.
I was sort of around quite successful composers and
I didn't really find it very conducive and then I just got a bit inhabited.
It all felt rather too competitive and not the right spirit.

(04:41):
So I had to sort of retreat from that for quite a while personally
until I found a source of inspiration which I felt like was mine
I was mine but also was kind of clear and for me that was actually experiences like going
to India for the first time when, not necessarily because I'm massively influenced by Indian

(05:04):
music but the cultural experience was so different that I felt it was bringing something completely
new to me which I wanted to express.
that. I wasn't totally sure of what my identity was. I was brought up by a German mother and
an English father and I don't feel basically either of those things. I'm certainly not Indian

(05:27):
and I'm proud to be European but going to India for the first time, the first of many times was
a real weird experience of sort of homecoming. Maybe you could say spiritual homecoming but you
know that's a thing that's always shifting. Something happened to inspire me back into composition there
which felt freeing from the pressures I'd felt at home.

(05:50):
We're here today to talk about Olivier Messiaen and the Vingt regards sur l'enfant Jésus
which I've always translated to 20 looks at the infant Jesus, 20 visions, if right, and it's huge.
Yeah it is huge, it's got 20 movements, it lasts about two hours, a bit more than two hours

(06:13):
and really really intense but very tiring physically because it's a tiring piece.
It's by some way the longest piece that we have covered on Cacophony.
I don't think I've ever seen people play chunks of it.
Oh no, people do actually. That certainly the way I came to it and when I was,

(06:34):
I've been playing three of the movements for about 35 years and then gradually adding other movements.
the 10th movement in particular which is called Varguard de Les Prit de Choir
The Spirit of Joy. It's a dance, a sort of
jazzy, crazy dance and it's probably the most famous movement of the set for me.

(06:55):
It's how I got into playing more contemporary music and when it was much more contemporary back then.
So I played the Regard de l'Esprit de joie when I was a student
And then I learnt a few more and I also played as a piece called

(07:16):
Des Canyons aux étoiles which is another big piano concerto piece from
later in his life which has 12 movements. There's all these massive pieces by
Messiaen. The composer George Benjamin who was
kind of a student in Paris at that time with Messiaen came to college to conduct it.
So I got to know him and through him the Messiaen. Messiaen and his wife came to college

(07:38):
and I played to them, Messiaen and his wife, who was a pianist called Yvonne L'Oriod,
who played all his piano music and most of it's written for her.
And actually it was incredibly interesting to see them work together.
Obviously she's very highly rated. She's actually a little under sung as a creative
voice because she had a lot to say about how his music went. I think you know,

(07:59):
decisions were made by her. There's lots of stuff on the scores which is from her.
and she was really great to work with.
And your score is signed by both Messian and Lloyd?
Yeah it is, which is something I'm very proud of. You can't really tell that from the state of the
score but these scores do fall apart when you play them. And it's you know 176 pages of music,

(08:24):
so it tends to fall apart. But I do have it signed on the page where it is dedicated to her by both
of them when they came to college which was wonderful. Very precious. So, Olivier Messiaen
was an organist at Paris Church for 60 years but piano was his main instrument really?

(08:46):
There's a lot of... Both organ and piano music and it's quite easy to notice the influence of the
organ on the piano music but yeah there is absolutely tons of piano music but I think that may very
much have been to do with L'Oriod becoming the love of his life and such an inspiration.
This isn't actually the biggest set of his pieces. The catalogue of birds is probably longer,

(09:07):
but that's not necessarily a set. You can play isolated ones of them. They come in different volumes.
Amongst the things that influence Messiaen then, we have L'Oriod that love his life. We have birds
nature which you've just mentioned. So he was fascinated by birds and in catalogue of birds

(09:28):
he's trying to replicate birdsong in music. Yeah, much more so than in the earlier pieces.
There were at least three moments of this piece we're talking about in the Vingt regards which
have birdsong elements, this one which is almost entirely birdsong. But by the time it gets to the
Catalogue d'Oiseaux. It's much more kind of precise sound observations. It's a very

(09:54):
odd and brilliant mix. Very scientific. They recorded the birds. He and his wife were both
mad or mythologists and then played them back down a few octaves to make them audible to the human
ear and then start arranging the patterns of the birds into the pieces. In most of the catalogue
birds, the Catalogue d'Oiseaux. It's not just birds, it's birds in their setting and

(10:19):
their setting, like whether it be cliffs or the sea or rolling countryside
represented by musical symbols. And he's incredibly literal about these
musical symbols, like they're written on the score. It's a really delightful thing
about playing Messiaen. He always tells you what he's doing. He tells you what's
happening formally in the pieces, what the meaning of it is like there's some

(10:41):
narrative or some scene he's depicting, he describes that on the score.
In fetch. In normal language.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I could probably find an example.
If, let me just open it around on the page and see what comes up.
Well, I opened immediately at the Regard des hauteurs, which is Regard of the heights,
which is a bird's one.

(11:01):
And immediately they talk, there's a little paragraph that says,
The glory of the heights, the heights descend on the creche.
you know where Jesus is.
And then at the end, all the birds sing, and that's on the score.
Then if we turn to, number six, it tells you what's going on technically in the piece, which is called
Everything was Made by Him.

(11:22):
Spaces and Durations, Galaxies, Photons,
Contrary spirals, inverse thunderbolts.
By Him, the word, Everything was Made.
At a certain moment, creation opens to us the luminous sound of his voice.
And then it's a fugue and the minute it starts, he marks the subject of the fugue,

(11:43):
the counter-subject of the fugue, the subject changed in rhythm and register, it's all written on the
score. So that's really helpful. It's the technical information about what's happening in the music,
like if you want to think about how it's put together, but also what the inspiration is, what the
scene is, if you like. It's really helpful if you're learning it because it can be quite impenetrable.
One of the first obstacles to a pianist or a musician who might come from older music is

(12:07):
there aren't conventional time signatures, doesn't say 4 in a bar or 3 in a bar.
It doesn't mean it doesn't sound like there are. It's just that they vary so much that it
doesn't bother with them and he has these habits of... Oh so they're not put in at all? No. Oh wow.
These bars we're looking at here are 5 plus 5 plus 8. So the pattern is very clear and then

(12:33):
and other patterns are working against it.
So it would be more confusing to put it
in a conventional times signature actually,
where and occasionally I must admit,
like many pianists I probably cheat and write one in
if it's helpful, but generally he doesn't use them.
And that's partly because he also uses really simple,

(12:54):
but neat ideas of changing for variation,
which is a classic standard thing in classical music.
but just simple things like adding a notes length at the end and at the beginning
and then adding another one. Another one, another one is a classic Messiaen thing.
If he wants a passage which builds up in excitement, he'll do that.

(13:17):
That will take the same few chords or whatever and just add bits to the outer
edges so it gets bigger and bigger.
So the other big inspiration and motivation for Messiaen is his faith.
Yeah.
And he was a great devout Catholic.
And this 20 aspects look at visions of the infant Jesus is somehow all-encompassing,

(13:44):
what am I trying to say? It's not in the Nativity, is it?
It's not the nativity.
Oh, no, no, no. It's not in any sort of sentimental soft or sweet sense.
I mean, there are very sweet moments with some gorgeously sweet movements.
movement. There's also the other end. One of the most surprising movements for me is the the angels

(14:04):
who are absolutely ferocious.
And it ends with one of those things I was describing where something stretches gradually and the
French water uses this stupor which I guess is like the awe of the angels increases.

(14:26):
[MUSIC]
[Music]

(15:00):
They're very masculine angels, they're not but they're not even masculine, they're warriors.
I don't know whether this will necessarily mean much to people, but this kind of approach to religion is like the Russian composer [Galina] Ustvolskaya,
whose music is very, very religious, but pure, or, you know, like there's nothing sweet about it.
It's very, very loud, it's extremely aggressive, and she'll write, like, Messiaen does, she'll write, 6F's, Dolce, sweetly.

(15:29):
It's like it's trying to, I don't know, it's trying to rip the universe open somehow.
It's really trying to make something happen through a musical symbol that isn't sweet,
isn't pacifying you. Again, having said that, the Messiaen has beautiful, sweet moments and
gentle movements and simple movements amongst the 20 and some that are quite dance-like.

(15:52):
There's three or four that have what he calls an exotic quality and use a particular one of his
scales in the sound of tam-tams at the bottom of the piano which represents at one
point the the wise men and the shepherds but there is there is a sort of ferocious
awe I suppose I'd call it in it which is absolutely the antidote of all the

(16:14):
sweet Christmas crap we've had. It's a very overwhelming thing it's a very
overwhelming thing when you open yourself to the fact that we are really here
right now and I think that's what some creative artists trying to do is just
slightly around the face and say metaphorically this is amazing and
right now it's happening and I think great music, quick art, generally.

(16:40):
Great experiences, you know, can make that happen.
Do you need to be spiritually inclined to get this music?
To listen to that, I don't know.
I mean, I would say that we all are script-ified by definition.
Yeah, that's a really hard question. It's really difficult if you say things like,

(17:03):
or if you talk about being spiritual. I mean, it's usually said by people when they're just
about to do something horrible. And so there's loads and loads of spirituality in people who
don't profess to be. There's loads of people doing good and living well and where they find

(17:23):
that ability from, I don't know. I imagine if everyone is different. For me, I do respond
to this because the thing that sort of wakes me up to the universe and being lucky to be in it
and in all this complexity and sometimes ghastliness is that sense of awe, like occasionally,

(17:45):
which I've had through music, sometimes through meditation, through other art forms, through
yoga, through travel to amazing places. It doesn't resonate with me, but a lot of people
get a lot from sport, for example. You know, watching sport is a really, really emotional
experience. That's rather snobbishly gainsaid by people, sometimes. My husband's an artist,

(18:06):
yeah, at the same time, one of the few things that makes him cry is sport.
I think the same may be said of a lot of men actually.
Yeah.
But you know, that's a kind of acknowledgement that things are amazing.
And you might not even articulate it like that, but you, well the tears are because you

(18:27):
can't articulate, aren't they?
They just, they sort of come from a deeper place.
I've personally been on a slow sort of spiritual journey and the further along I get them,
more I doubt things and the less sure I am I can say anything about it so I think it is difficult to talk about.
Yeah, I cry at sport but then I cry at most things.

(18:49):
Yeah, I just switch sport off.
Everyone finds it in a different place.
You said something about what makes this music spiritual or something like that or what gives it that ability.
I don't know whether it is.
I don't, I think that's just something you project onto it.
I'm not saying I don't love it,

(19:10):
but on the deeper philosophical level.
I feel like that's a bit problematic to say that,
that something is inherently,
like a piece of music inherently spiritual.
Of course, Messiaen writes all that in
and makes it clear what's important to him
in the writing of it.
But perhaps Messiaen's need to explain
as a double edged sword,

(19:30):
because too much explaining just makes it looks like,
Well, the music means this, whereas actually the music is just the music.
And those are just, they are finger posts, tell you how you might play it,
or how you might think of it as a player, and how you might listen to it as a listener.
But still that's a bit tricky.

(19:50):
They're just pointing you in a direction, but then actually the music is just the
music.
And there may be all sorts of other structures in the music and other
effects in the music which are too subtle to be described.
And basically I'm just saying, you know, there's a reason there's a piece of music and not just a description of it.

(20:11):
Yeah, yeah.
What is the expression? The map is not the landscape.
Right. That's an expression I've heard from Buddhist teachers.
One of the problems with what we're doing now.
Yeah, we're trying to talk about it.
And yeah, you just want to immerse yourself in it.
and you really do have to,
but you know, it's only two hours,

(20:32):
it's only like watching a film.
(laughs)
And, and, yeah.
So that's, that's a beauty of most music.
It doesn't take maybe as long as to read a book.
- No, we're carrying things.
- There are, yeah, they're from time to time.
The theme of God appears a lot,
and I was the first thing that hooked me on this piece

(20:52):
when I, when I first heard this,
The first one of the Vingt regards is Regard du Père,
the view of the Fath, which just presents
the very simple theme, which kind of underlines the work,
which is the theme of God,
which is just a sequence of a few rather beautiful chords.
So these kind of gorgeous, scrunchie,
jazzy, F-sharp major chords.

(21:14):
And they come back at every climax,
'cause it's God, God appears.
F-sharp major tends to be the Mega Joy key.
F-sharp major has all the shops,
So the idea is it's right incredibly bright.
Even if you can't hear that,
there's a sort of suggestive idea that it's very, very bright.
(gentle music)
(gentle music)

(21:36):
(gentle piano music)
(gentle music)
(gentle music)
(gentle music)
(piano music)
(gentle music)
(piano music)
[Music]

(22:22):
The one I was talking about earlier, Par Lui tout a été fait, it's about the creation of the heavens and the planets and at the very end of that movement, which is the sixth movement, God's face appears through the clouds and the lightning and the planets all whizzing around.
I live in an amazing film, that movement, the way he describes what's happening in it.

(22:43):
And that's the theme of God reappearing, but in a completely transformed way.
My notes for this movement say big stuff in spades.
Yeah, absolutely. It's God making the heavens.
And he throws everything at that movement.
It's very dark light because it's the glorification of God through all his technical means.
You know, if he's going to represent the galaxies and the photons and the spiraling stars,

(23:07):
he's just going to do everything that composer can do. So it is a very complex
fugue which runs forward and then backwards again. And it's not that uncommon
to have palindromes in classical music, but this is a long one. It's like five
minutes this way and then five minutes back again. I didn't realise for ages
when I was learning it. It's so crafty written. You don't realise it's the same

(23:27):
music going backwards. And that as a symbol or an image is incredible. Where does it
start and finish it doesn't. It just turns on itself it's that that's something I find extraordinary
in his music that is sort of symbolic power and then that builds after that to the revelation of
God's face.

(23:48):
[Music]
The theme of God, the face of God appearing by the flame and

(24:11):
Boulliment, boilingness, it's like cauldron oak. You can see it like in some 1930s film and that's
that's god transformed from the beginning. There are a few themes but they're basically
quite simple. There's a theme of god, theme of love.
[Music]

(24:50):
There's the theme of the cross and the star and it doesn't appear that much.
There's a movement which is across in the middle of the start.
Messiaen talks about the start on the cross being intertwined in his theology.

(25:21):
I don't know if that's a conventional theological idea.
So they have the same theme because they're the beginning and the end of Christ's life.
It's the same theme in the Regard de la Croix but slowed down outer voices.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[ Music ]

(26:09):
And there is a theme of chords, which is only four or five chords.
And I don't think that one's quite so important because that's just something he uses to make stuff.
- This building blocks. - Yeah, building blocks, rather than moments of
Drama.
Structurally, his music is quite unique.

(26:33):
It's just like a mosaic, it's in blocks,
rather than developing in the way that
19th century classical music does.
In some ways that makes it really easy to follow.
I have an adult student at the moment
who is womaning her way through the Vingt regards
and she's learned seven of them.
But whenever she starts one, I say to Miriam, that's her name,

(26:55):
just look at the score before you start
and see how much repetition there is.
Because it's a great comfort
when you've learned a page to realise that that page is going to repeat quite a lot.
And it might appear in a different transposition or something later or a bit of it might appear,
but basically he does that a lot, so there are kind of blocks of things.
And I think that makes it quite easy for an audience actually.

(27:18):
You know, even if you don't immediately like the musical language,
like it's to jagged for you or too dissonant,
well, A, you're going to be able to hear how it's shaped,
but also the chances are there will be a softer bit coming.
There will be something more appealing to you,
you know, if you just happen to have taste
for something sweet rather than something savory.

(27:41):
Pause it like that.
To his credit, they are kept really simple, those themes.
So you really can identify them.
The theme of God is really just, it's just four chords,
which are very easy to identify.
For me, a more interesting way to listen to it
and sort of navigate it. There are these movements of different types. There's

(28:06):
definitely love movements in here. Le baiser de l'Enfant Jésus is a wonderful one.
The Kiss of the Child Jesus.
(piano music)
(piano music)
(piano music)
(piano music)
(piano music)

(28:27):
(piano music)
(piano music)
(piano music)
(piano music)
(piano music)
(piano music)
[Music]

(29:10):
And then there are movements which are a bit bird-song-y.
And then there are two or three rather exotic movements
which have gongs and kind of for one of the best words,
Eastern scales, they're Messiaen's own scales,
but in the shepherds and the major,
there's some nice evocation of Eastern instruments.

(29:30):
Yeah, how does he talk about her?
Exotic music, tamb-tams and oboe,
enormous nasal concert!
(laughs)
That's how that movements described.
And then there are sort of mysterious,
almost maybe a bit theological movements,
the Son, looking at the Son.
- Silence.
- Silence, the star, the cross, one,

(29:52):
which is kind of the descent of God,
which is just a phrase that gets louder and louder
repeating the 10th movement is this,
Regard de l'Esprit de joie,
the big kind of Lisztian party-piece in the set.
But then it's immediately followed by a beautiful one.
The first communion of the Virgin, in the middle,
there's a sort of crisis of discord,

(30:14):
and then the chords start to get more beautiful,
and there are low repeated notes, irregular numbers,
and they are Christ's heartbeat.
They are Mary feeling the beating of her son's heart in her,
which is kind of amazing.
And they're all irregular.
(gentle music)
(gentle music)

(30:36):
(gentle music)
(gentle music)
(gentle music)
(soft music)
♪♪

(30:56):
♪♪
♪♪
[Music]

(31:30):
That's like one bar will be 11, then 12, then 13.
That room is extremely beautiful and that that movement's quite often played on its own.
One of the things that struck me watching the YouTube performance that you gave
as that I thought we were watching a lockdown performance without audience.
Hmm.
I thought it was just you and your husband, page turning, and the silence is the quality

(31:54):
of the silence that was being held between movements and sometimes within movements.
I think plays a really important part in the cumulative experience of the piece.
Hmm.
I mean, that's probably another important thing to say about the piece and the ingredients
of his music generally is there's quite a lot of silence in it, the pauses are long, things are slow.

(32:14):
Is it enjoyable to play? Can you enjoy playing it? Or is it so much sheer material?
Well I have literally only played it as one sequence once and that was a very special occasion
because it was in lockdown. My father had died that year, it was on his birthday by a complete

(32:36):
fluke and my dad shared a birthday with Messiaen. So it was like, oh this is weird. So I was,
and it was the only concert I'd done for a couple of months because of lockdown. It's all very
special. I had a lot of weird energy. A lot of my friends came and were in the audience in their
masks. My husband was turning pages because I couldn't have a page turner and he can't read music,

(32:59):
but he did great job. It was probably a bit, a bit special on my occasion. People who I spoke
I spoke to you said it, yeah, it had a rather extraordinary atmosphere just because of all the circumstances and quite a few people hadn't been to a concert for, you know, probably that year.
And it doesn't actually get played that much as a whole thing.

(33:19):
It's taken me an awful lot longer to get around to than I intended and I was really glad to actually finally get the chance.
you got any favourite moments?
Hmm, that's a good question.
I do like that bit where the face of God is revealed behind the thunder and the turbulence

(33:42):
is kind of amazing.
And actually the way it's written as a sequence of movements, the first movement is a very
quiet, simple iteration, but nonetheless takes eight minutes of just the theme of God.
And then the four movements after that are all quite quiet and reflective and fragmented
and they're all going somewhere like it doesn't really start to get until you have to do the

(34:04):
sixth movement and then the sixth movement is probably the hardest movement, ferociously
hard. That whole movement is extraordinary. God making the heavens. There are loads of
fantastic moments. Some of the quiet writing is amazing but I obviously like some of the
kind of awe inspiring, mean stuff like the angry angels and the unction and what's the one

(34:29):
La parole tout-puissante, the all-powerful Word, which is a kind of a simple, sort of sinuous,
again slightly exotic melody with term terms represented by something out the three bottom
notes on the piano in various different rhythms. But it's so simple, it's just like a really

(34:49):
striking straightforward idea. So going from these very complex layered movements to
something as simple as that, which is just one object. It has a huge range.
Because of the research I'm doing it or planning, I'm looking to the way the
India is about Sanskrit. And it's very dodgy. It's very dodgy politically, this whole idea that

(35:15):
something has like innate magical value. I feel that's happening a little bit with the way
Sanskrit is being used in India as the magic language which belongs to us and makes us superior.
Yeah.
It's a brilliant language. But you know, languages are all quite brilliant actually. And I feel
the same about saying that about music. It doesn't mean, you know, that I'm not or the

(35:40):
universe, but I don't want to say that this thing that I like has the spiritual stuff.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
That I said that thing about, you know, sport. Just because I don't get something you don't
get a thrilling experience from it. I don't think my experience is better than anyone
else's who experiences that. It's a waste of that, isn't it? If you're in a chime that

(36:00):
way, it's all miraculous. Yeah, there's not a sort of pecking order of it, is there? Do you want to
join my cult?. I want to hear you play the piano!
Thanks so much to Ralph Hind for joining us on Cacophony to talk about his visions on the
the 20 Reflections on the Infant Jesus by Olivier Messiaen.

(36:22):
Now let's have a listen.
There's a link to Rolf's live performance from London in the podcast episode notes.
If you have a movie night to spare, this piece will be extra rewarding if you can explore
it in one go.
As Rolf said, you need much less time than to read a book.
Best of all, if you're in the sweet spot of hearing this immediately after its release,

(36:43):
and are in reach of Durham Cathedral UK, Rolf will be playing the piece in concert on the
16th of January 2024 because the best musical experiences happen in a room with live musicians.
Once you've had a listen, remember to tell us what you think.
You can leave a comment or simple voice message at cacophonyonline.com or find us on social media.

(37:03):
There must be someone you know interested in epic piano music, spirituality or terrifying angels.
Who are they? Please share Cacophony with them.
If you'd like to support us and are able to, the best ways are by telling your friends and family to listen,
or making a donation to support running costs. You can do that via the link to coffee.com.

(37:24):
Come back for more next time, and thanks for listening.
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