LISTENING LIST

Bird concerto with Pianosong (2003) by Jonathan Harvey

Forty Californian birds, including the Indigo Bunting, Orchard Oriole and Golden-crowned Sparrow inspired this 30-minute work that fuses together recordings and abstract piano melodies to create a vibrant homage to Messiaen.

On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring (1912) by Frederick Delius

Composed in the same pastoral style as Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending, Delius’s music is centred around the much-loved cuckoo call, which is passed around the orchestral instruments and is particularly effective in the clarinet part.

The Birds (1928) by Ottorino Respighi

Based on early attempts to transcribe birdsong, this orchestral work includes references to doves, cuckoos, nightingales and hens (the original transcription also inspired Saint-Saëns’s ‘ Hens and Cockerels’ in Carnival of the Animals).

Absolute Bird: Concerto for Recorder and Orchestra (2017) by Hollis Taylor

Field recordings of Australian birds are melded with a complex solo recorder line that blurs the boundaries between human- and animal-made music in this remarkable work, commissioned by recorder player Genevieve Lacey, who premiered it with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.

Oiseaux exotiques (1955-56) by Olivier Messiaen

Written in a similar vein to catalogue d’oiseux, oiseux exotiques is scored for piano and chamber orchestra and is based on the songs of birds from Asia and North and South America, such as the Baltimore Oriole, the Greater Prairie Chicken, Red-whiskered Bulbul and the Wood Thrush.