Preservation

“Messiaen is not so present here, but he is very present in me.” On June 20, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, the pianist and first non-UK based artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival, realized the composer’s “Catalogue d’oiseaux” indoors and outdoors in nature in Suffolk, England. It was his last major project at the festival, where he has worked since 2009.The 13 piano pieces in the collection were performed in the Hall Café of the Snape Maltings. Starting at 4:30 a.m. and finishing just before midnight, over the pre-dawn reedbeds and the River Alde, we followed the works through strategically placed loudspeakers; picnicked and walked on the hill of the Minsmere; then Aimard brought Messiaen’s birdsong transcriptions outside, into an accidental dialogue with the thrush’s chatter and the raven’s chirp, as they soared beneath the clouds. The last concert took place in the dark in the Britten Studio, where we lay on the floor around the piano, meditating through the 30-minute “Reed Warber,” while the wooden beams above gradually came to represent the transcendental.The next morning, 10 hours after the last concert, Aimard opened the door at his Aldeburgh home and spoke with me for an hour, holding his two-year-old son Arthur. Apart from bringing in Messiaen’s rich body of work throughout the years, Aimard has invited Pierre Boulez, Elliott Carter, George Benjamin, Benedict Mason, and Julian Anderson to the festival.