I bought Quatuor pour la fin du temps yesterday, as the Ensemble Walter Boeykens recording was going in HMV for  less than the price of a De Luxe Sushi and latte in Pret a manger, and I just put it in to itunes.

Gracewing came up with track details.

I bet you didn't know the genre of that piece is Alternative and Punk.

I submitted my corrected details.  Gracewing does not allow Chamber as a genre, so I called it Classical.

Alexei Aigi, leader of the 4'33" Ensemble and pioneer of electro-minimalism in Russia, was disappointed to find all his albums filed under "Country & Western" in a Moscow music-store.

Is this "Country & Western" as opposed to "Decadent Western", Reiner?

I once found - well actually I had to go to the helpdesk and ask them to find it for me - Dagmar Krause's Supply and Demand under "Soundtracks".  It had its own little filing card and everything and was neatly filed under 'S': Showboat, Singin' in the Rain, The Sound of Music, Supply and Demand...

I'm sure I remember seeing Benny Hill play Messe de la Pentecote then dashing off to chase, at a very high speed, some women dressed only in their underwear.

I think it's obvious to all serious Messiaen scholars who don't wilfully blind themselves to the obvious facts that that's what Le Vent de l'Esprit is really all about.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PATRNZsVdiM

And as for Joie du sang des étoiles, well, I'm sure we don't need to go there.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=170VZGFoTKg

You're too kind, DB - there are many here who could answer the question better than I. But here I am.

(And the Melbourne winter I think even you Poms would find recognisably wintry. The papal visit was fine although for the business persons of Sydney it wasn't so good - from what I hear all their regular customers got the heck out of Sydney and the visitors stayed in churches or were billeted and spent what money they did spend in official church places. Apparently it would have been a great opportunity to get premium hotel rooms at knock-down prices. If I'd known we would have stayed an extra couple of days there...)

I don't mind the Rattle at all - that was my own second recording of it, Previn being the first. For me it was one of the first Messiaen recordings which moved to a significant extent away from the composer's own circle and the sounds and interpretative approaches he knew. Most (all?) of the previous recordings of Turangalîla had at least one Loriod in them, for example.

On the other hand about as cheap not so long ago (it might be still) is my own favourite recording, of the Berliner Philharmoniker with Pierre-Laurent Aimard under Nagano. If they're both about a fiver I'd go for that one.

The one I saw today for £6 was Paul Crossley on the ivories, under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen.  Worth a try?

No! Don't do it! Salonen does Messiaen in such a tidied-up, bloodless, er, Protestant kind of way which I for one find quite offputting.

I suppose I should add: I also think Nagano's recording is absolutely terrific (though it cedes first place in my irrational heart to Ozawa's, which was the first I heard and pretty much changed my life) and the set that Bryn mentions is I would say essential listening for anyone who wants to get to know Messiaen's music. 18 CDs sounds like a lot, but for most of the output of one of the very deepest and most original musical thinkers of the last century ithe scope of it leaves me somewhat awestruck. The item I keep returning to is Yvonne Loriod's recording of the Catalogue d'oiseaux. No other pianist IMO has come anywhere near her in expressing the range and subtlety of colour and space in this work.