Clare Stevens introduces Messiaen’s awe-inspiring Turangalîla-symphonie, which receives its first ever Three Choirs performance this year.

‘Immersive’ ‘Kaleidoscopic’ ‘Sick’ ‘Timeless’ ‘Concupiscent’ ‘Ecstatic’ ‘Psychedelic’ ‘A piano concertissimo’ and ‘Turangalîlawesome’ – just some of the phrases my musician friends and colleagues came up with when I asked them to describe Turangalîla-symphonie by the French composer Olivier Messiaen, which the Philharmonia Orchestra will perform in Hereford Cathedral on Sunday 26 July. A noticeable theme developed: ‘Saucy,’ said one friend. ‘Musical Viagra’, said another. ‘Pure sex’ said a third. ‘Upforit,’ added yet another.

Turangalîla, as it is usually known in this country, is an extraordinary work for a vast orchestra of over a hundred players, in ten movements, lasting around 70 minutes. The title comes from two Sanskrit words – turanga and lîla – which roughly translate into English as ‘love song and hymn of joy, time, movement, rhythm, life, and death’, and the composer himself described that sense of joy that runs through the piece as ‘superhuman, overflowing, dazzling and abandoned’.

The piece was written between 1946 and 1948 for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, commissioned by their great Russian music director Serge Koussevitsky, explains Kington-based musicologist Roger Nichols, who will be giving a pre-concert talk on Turangalîla ahead of the Three Choirs Festival performance. ‘Koussevitzky said to Messiaen: “I'm commissioning you to write an orchestral work that can be as long as you like and use as many instruments as you like.”

The result is a kind of Hollywood spectacular that drives a coach and horses through the traditional view of French music as short, misty, discreet and undemanding.’ The orchestra of over a hundred instruments includes a spectacular array of percussion – though there are no harps, unusually, and no timpani. There is a demanding solo piano part, written for the composer’s wife, Yvonne Loriot, and played in Hereford by the Scottish pianist Steven Osborne; but the most ear-catching and unusual solo instrument is the ondes-martenot, an electronic keyboard with a strange, mystical sound often heard in film scores but rarely in classical music. It uses an oscillator to produce pitches, one at a time, creating a unique swooping sound.

The premiere of Turangalîla was actually conducted by Leonard Bernstein, who wrote West Side Story, in 1949. ’Sixty-six years later, it still sounds like nothing on earth,’ says music critic Richard Bratby. ‘Imagine an explosion of love on a cosmic scale. Mix in 1940s film score, a pounding rhythmic workout and a Javanese gamelan, all washed in blissful impressionist colours. Now add a huge orchestra, a world-class pianist and a vintage electronic instrument straight out of science fiction…and you’re still not even half-way to imagining Messiaen’s mind-boggling Turangalîla.’ Of course the piece has its detractors. ‘Floccinaucinihilipilificatious,’ harrumphed one of my journalist colleagues, which turned out to mean ‘to be regarded as insignificant or worthless’. But by far the majority of respondents to my random request were enthusiastic. One, who once had the thrilling experience of turning pages for the piano soloist at a BBC Proms performance of the work in the Royal Albert Hall, recalls the sensation as ‘like being inside a vortex’ and described Turangalîla as ‘an interstellar fun-fair. A solar flare crash-landing on the moon. Plutonium and champagne. What happens when you put Wagner in the microwave. What your tummy feels when you first fall in love. All the relentless, multicoloured mayhem of the internet prefigured in music.’ Turangalîla has never before been performed at the Three Choirs Festival and we’re pretty sure it has never been heard live in any of the festival cities. This really is the opportunity of a lifetime to hear this epic work in Hereford Cathedral. Don’t miss it!

The pre-concert talk Music and … Turangalîla by Roger Nichols is part of the Three Choirs Plus programme and takes place in Left Bank Coach House at 4 pm on Sunday 26 July.

Turangalîla-symphonie will be performed in Hereford Cathedral at 7.45pm on Sunday 26 July.

Tickets for both: www.3Choirs.org Ticket Office 0845 652 1823

Who was Olivier Messiaen?

Olivier Messiaen was born in Avignon in the south of France in 1908. At an early age he was captivated by the music of Claude Debussy and made up his mind to be a composer, beginning his studies at the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 11. He was also an organist, serving at the church of La Trinité in Paris for 40 years, with the exception of a brief period during the second world war when he served in the army, was captured and imprisoned. During his time in a prisoner-of-war camp in Görlitz in Silesia he composed one of his most haunting pieces, the Quartet for the End of Time: utterly different in scale from Turangalîla, it was written for the four instruments available, which happened to be a clarinet, violin, cello and piano.

Messiaen was considered to be one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, writing extensively for piano, orchestra and organ. But although his music was generally avant-garde in style, he did not subscribe to any of the systems that other composers were exploring. His musical language was entirely his own, influenced by his preoccupations with colour, harmony, rhythm, and the natural world, particularly birdsong, which he transcribed and often incorporated in his music, either note for note or as an instrumental timbre. His music was also hugely influenced by his profound Roman Catholic faith. He died in 1992.