Olivier Messiaen – Harawi (Chant D’Amour Et De Mort)

Harawi
Sarah Maria Sun, soprano
Stefka Perifanova, piano

mode 310/11 (2-LPs)

Harawi is a cycle of twelve songs scored for soprano and piano composed in 1945. Harawi (known to Spanish speakers as yaraví) designates a song about a fated love that ends in the death of both lovers. Messiaen remarked that “it is the story of Tristan and Isolde.”

The surrealistic text of Harawi is Messiaen’s own. Using the musical structures Messiaen had created for Harawi, he built massive phrases in these songs, expanding space and time, creating extreme tenderness, vastness, clarity and abysses.

In Harawi both lovers are not only human, but beings, which transform again and again. Destruction, pain, death, creation, joy, dance and love are not final — they are all ever changing particles of our interwoven cosmic existence.

• Includes 12-page book with complete lyrics plus extensive text on Harawi by Siglind Bruhn, including copious illustrations and musical examples