Festival Closing Concert | Roger Muraro Performs Messiaen’s “Catalogue of Birds”

Lasting nearly three hours, this 13-part cycle is, due to its scale and complexity, one of the most rarely performed 20th-century piano programs in the world, and in Lithuania it is presented only on exceptional occasions. For this reason, the closing concert of the International M. K. Čiurlionis Music Festival will be all the more special.

Catalogue of Birds is a soundscape breathing with the voices of 77 birds. Messiaen, a passionate ornithologist, carefully notated their songs in their natural environments and believed that music itself was born in birdsong. A composer who “heard” colors in harmonies, he created at the piano not only worlds of sound, but also visions of light and landscape.

Roger Muraro is one of the foremost interpreters of Messiaen’s music in the world. Having studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Yvonne Loriod—Messiaen’s wife, muse, and the first performer of Catalogue of Birds—he inherited an authentic tradition of performing this music.

It is no coincidence that the composer himself said of Muraro: “Roger Muraro is an outstanding performer of my music—he understands it not only technically, but spiritually.”

After Muraro performed the cycle Twenty Contemplations on the Infant Jesus, Messiaen added: “(I admire) his dazzling technique, his mastery, his sound colors, his emotion and, I dare say, his faith! .”

Muraro’s 2001 recording of the complete cycle of Messiaen’s piano works is still regarded as a benchmark and has been described by critics as “an unparalleled artistic achievement,” in which astonishing technique merges with an intimate, poetic understanding of the music. Performing this repertoire requires not only phenomenal technique, but also immense concentration, endurance, and imagination—qualities for which Muraro is renowned worldwide.

The festival’s closing evening will offer a unique opportunity not only to experience Muraro’s exceptional artistry, but also to hear the complete artistic vision of Catalogue of Birds by one of the leading interpreters of Messiaen’s music.