What began in the Snape Maltings cafe with the assertive song of the black-eared wheatear, as the sun rose over the Alde river, ended just before midnight in a darkened Britten Studio with the sound of a booming bittern. For the centrepiece of his final festival as artistic director at Aldeburgh, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, chose to perform Catalogue d’Oiseaux, the longest and perhaps the greatest of all Olivier Messiaen’s piano works – and his most systematic use of the material that dominated his music for close to 40 years.
The pedigree of the performance was impeccable. Aimard is one of the finest Messiaen interpreters around, and the Catalogue was composed for his teacher Yvonne Loriod. But the way he chose to present the three hours of music was also a wonderful tribute to the festival and to the Suffolk countryside in which it has always been embedded. Originally divided into seven books, the 13 musical portraits that make up the Catalogue had been regrouped according to the time of day they depict – first light, midday, dusk and night-time. Aimard then played them at those times on what was one of the longest days of the year in Britain, beginning with The Black-Eared Wheatear at dawn and ending the day with the longest in the set, The Reed Warbler, which is in itself a round-the-clock evocation of the bird song of a marsh exactly like those surrounding the Maltings.
For the dusk session, the performance went up the coast a few miles to the RSPB reserve at Minsmere, where Aimard played overlooking the reed beds on an outdoor stage conveniently just vacated by the BBC’s Springwatch series. If it wasn’t quite the balmy summer evening everyone hoped for, at least it didn’t rain, and the sophisticated sound system relayed Aimard’s short recital to an audience of around 500 with remarkable naturalness.
At Minsmere, inevitably, Messiaen’s transcriptions sometimes competed with the real thing. There were strident song thrushes in the woodland behind the stage, a chattering group of jackdaws counterpointing the grunt of their larger cousin the raven quoted during The Alpine Chough. The explosive songs of distant Cetti’s warblers on the edge of the reeds were a reminder that Messiaen’s portrait of that bird had been included in Aimard’s early morning recital.
Back at Snape, the final recital included what are perhaps the two most haunting pieces in the set: the dark, nocturne-like Tawny Owl, and the exquisite, evanescent melodic cadences of The Woodlark. By the time he played those two pieces, as well as the final tour de force of The Reed Warbler, Aimard had been immersed in this cycle for almost 18 hours. It was an extraordinary feat of concentration. Though one shouldn’t, the astonishing virtuosity of his playing could be taken for granted.
• Available on BBC iPlayer until 19 July. Aldeburgh festival continues until 26 June.
