Yuja Wang, Andris Nelsons and the BSO Release Messiaen's Epic Turangalîla-Symphonie with Deutsche Grammophon

Captured at Boston’s Symphony Hall in April 2024, this new Deutsche Grammophon recording presents Messiaen’s monumental Turangalîla-Symphonie. The work was one of the centerpieces of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s “Music of the Senses” Festival, aimed at expanding the audience experience through music that plays with color, light, sound, and time. The BSO and its Music Director Andris Nelsons were joined on stage by pianist and exclusive DG artist Yuja Wang and by Cécile Lartigau, one of today’s rare ondes Martenot players.  

A first taste of their dazzling interpretation can be heard in the exuberant fifth movement, Joie du sang des étoiles, released on November 15. The full recording will be released as a digital album on December 6, 2024, marking the 75th anniversary of the world premiere, given by the BSO and Leonard Bernstein on December 2, 1949. A physical release will follow in 2025.  

The BSO is celebrating two other significant anniversaries this year—it is 150 years since the birth of Serge Koussevitzky, its legendary ninth Music Director, and 100 years since his appointment to that role. It was Koussevitzky who commissioned Turangalîla, giving Messiaen free rein by telling him, “Choose as many instruments as you desire, write a work as long as you wish and in the style you want.” 

The result was this extraordinary, 10-movement symphony for large orchestra—including a vast array of percussion—with solo piano and ondes Martenot (an early electronic instrument). It was the perfect work for the BSO to program in its festival, not only because of its origins, but also because Messiaen’s synesthesia meant he saw colors when he heard or imagined sound. He called Turangalîla, which was inspired in part by the Tristan myth, “the most colored” of his works and a “hymn to joy." Under Nelsons’ baton, the BSO and the two virtuosic soloists reveal every facet of the work’s kaleidoscopic colors, heady harmonies, and sweeping emotional drama.