Mastersingers of nature: Birdsong in classical music

The nightingale is undoubtedly the queen of birds in classical music: with its extraordinarily rich, usually nocturnal song, it has inspired composers from the Baroque to the present day. In Ludwig van Beethoven’s Pastoral, it is represented by the flute – alongside the quail (oboe) and cuckoo (clarinet) – and Igor Stravinsky even dedicated an entire opera to it, Le Rossignol, based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Nightingale. In this performance by the Berliner Philharmoniker under Pierre Boulez, soprano Barbara Hannigan takes on the demanding role of the bird. Ottorino Respighi strove for even greater naturalism, demanding in his pictorial Pines of Rome that an actual recording of a nightingale be played in the third movement. In our recording from the Waldbühne concert under Riccardo Chailly, its mesmerising song fills the night sky over Berlin.

“The score is based on the songs of exotic birds from India, China, Malaysia and both Americas. The exotic birds that sing in this score have plumage of wonderful colours. These very vivid colours are in the music: all the colours of the rainbow are there, including red, the colour of the hot countries and the beautiful cardinal from Virginia!” is how Olivier Messiaen describes his Oiseaux exotiques for piano and small orchestra. The synaesthetically inclined composer – who could hear sounds in colours – was a keen ornithologist and imitates bird calls here with astonishing accuracy. Under the direction of Simon Rattle, soloist Mitsuko Uchida elicits the most colourful birdsong from the piano keys.