Rest in peace, Yvonne Loriod...

[piston]

Mainly remembered because of her close artistic partnership with her husband, Olivier Messiaen, madame Loriod's repertoire at the piano also encompassed works by Berg, Boulez and several other modern composers.

From the UK Guardian:

The death of Yvonne Loriod, Olivier Messiaen's widow, brings a great dynasty of French musical life to an end, after Messiaen's death in 1992 and that of her sister, the ondes martenot virtuoso Jeanne Loriod, in 2001. Yvonne was Messiaen's second wife. He had fallen in love with her when she was a teenage student of his at the Paris Conservatoire and she was his muse for five decades (they only married in 1961 after the death of Messiaen's first wife, Claire Delbos, in a sanatorium, after many years of mental illness). Loriod's playing was the inspiration for music from the gigantic cycle Vingt regards sure l'enfant-Jésus, for solo piano, to the piano parts of orchestral pieces like the Turangalila Symphony and Des canyons aux étoiles.

But Loriod's reputation was not only due to her unique relationship with her husband's music: she was one of the most powerful and persuasive of advocates of music by Pierre Boulez and Jean Barraqué, at a time when hardly any pianists anywhere were playing - or could play - modernist behemoths like Boulez's Second Sonata or the Barraqué Sonata. And together, she and Messiaen were mentors and models for musicians like composer George Benjamin (who studed with Loriod in Paris when he was 16, and remembers her as a "wonderful, exuberant, radiant" teacher) and Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who they adopted as their one of their pianists du choix in the 70s, when Aimard was still in his teens.

Yvonne's legacy is inevitably tied to her husband, but she was a great musician in her own right - and she was a composer too, as well as co-orchestrator of Messiaen's last orchestral work, the Concert à quatre. On YouTube, you can hear her pianistic brilliance in music by Boulez and Berg, as well as in some of the music her husband wrote for her - and you can see her play the piano solo in Des canyons aux étoiles here.

[piston]

For Lance's data bank, Ms. Loriod died yesterday, Monday, May 17, at the age of 86, after some three years of hospitalization resulting from a diabetic coma. She was born on 20 January 1924.

As a teenage pianist, her repertoire included all Chopin piano works, 22 Mozart piano concerti, and Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas. She earned seven first prizes at the Paris conservatoire where she studied in Messiaen's musical analysis class alongside Pierre Boulez. Beginning in 1943, she first performed all of Messiaen's works involving a piano.

She was featured on numerous recordings for Vega, Erato and Ades, including recordings of Debussy, Albeniz, Berg, some Mozart concertos with Pierre Boulez conducting. She also gave world premiere performances of works by Jolivet and Barraqué and introduced the French public to several pieces by Bartok and Schonberg.

In addition to performing her husband's work, she further transcribed for two pianos his monumental opera St. Francis of Assisi and orchestrated his Concert à quatre.

Yvonne Loriod also served as a great educator, especially at the Paris conservatoire between 1967 and 1989. Her students include Michel Béroff, Roger Muraro, and Pierre-Laurent Aimard.

(Information drawn from today's article in Le Monde)

[MarkC]

......and shouldn't we also show her playing the ondes martenot......(sorry that the sound quality isn't good)

Note to those who might just take a glance: it ain't a piano.

[PJME]

That is ofcourse her sister Jeanne , "la reine des ondes Martenot".
Jeanne Loriod died accidentally in Nice ( 2001).

From Wikipedioa:
Jeanne Loriod (13 July 1928 - 3 August 2001) was a French musician, regarded as the world's leading exponent of the ondes Martenot.[1]

Born in Houilles, Yvelines, she was the younger sister of Yvonne Loriod, the pianist and second wife of Olivier Messiaen. She performed all of Messiaen's works for ondes Martenot, most notably the Turangalila Symphony, which she recorded six times. The work was not written for her, however, but Ginette Martenot, sister of the inventor Maurice.

Loriod's enormous repertoire included fourteen concertos, some three hundred works with concertante parts for ondes and another 250 chamber works.[2] She also performed on numerous film soundtracks, and published a definitive work on the instrument, the three-volume treatise Technique de l’onde electronique type martenot (1987).

She suffered a stroke and drowned while swimming near Antibes on the French Riviera in August, 2001.[3]

[piston]

Yes, Jeanne played the ondes. She and her sister are featured in the first video clip, above.

[Lance]

Jacques, many thanks for remembering my data bank! I've added the information. Much appreciated.

—Lance

For Lance's data bank, Ms. Loriod died yesterday, Monday, May 17, at the age of 86, after some three years of hospitalization resulting from a diabetic coma. She was born on 20 January 1924. {snipped}

[MarkC]

That is ofcourse her sister Jeanne .....

Sorry -- my bad!!!!!
I thought that was Yvonne........didn't read closely enough.

(Thanks for correcting it.)

[mnmleung]

I was fortunately enough to attend a concert of the vingt regards played by Yvonne with Olivier in the audience as part of the Bath Festival in the late 1980s. It was a very special occasion... Now I have to dig out my Erato recording to have a listen ...

[piston]

She was a great lady. I bought a recording of the Oiseaux exotiques in my early twenties and was thoroughly fascinated by that work. What can you say about a couple listening to bird sounds with such religious intensity? They were two of a kind! In fact, it is worth remembering, however discomforting the thought, that Ms Loriod remained faithful to Olivier's convictions about fidelity and waited for a couple of decades before she could become his wife.