Concert à quatre is one of the final works of the French

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

 composer Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...

.

Written between 1990 and 1991, Messiaen originally intended the piece to have five movements. However, work on another large-scale piece, Éclairs sur l'au-delà…

Éclairs sur l'au-delà…

Éclairs sur l'au-delà… is an orchestral piece by the French composer Olivier Messiaen. Composed in 1987–91, it was his last completed work, his very last work being Concert à quatre...

, prevented him from completing it before his death. It is written for four soloists: pianist, cellist, flautist and oboist.

As it stands, the work is in four movements, in which Messiaen draws inspiration from Mozart as well as his regular use of birdsong. Of the completed movements, Messiaen's widow, Yvonne Loriod

Yvonne Loriod

Yvonne Loriod was a French pianist, teacher, and composer, and the second wife of composer Olivier Messiaen. Her sister was the Ondes Martenot player Jeanne Loriod.-Life:...

, in conjunction with the composers George Benjamin

George Benjamin (composer)

George William John Benjamin, CBE is a British composer of classical music. He is also a conductor, pianist and teacher....

 and Heinz Holliger

Heinz Holliger

Heinz Holliger Heinz Holliger Heinz Holliger (born 21 May 1939 is a Swiss oboist, composer and conductor.-Biography:He was born in Langenthal, Switzerland, and began his musical education at the conservatories of Bern and Basel. He studied composition with Sándor Veress and Pierre Boulez...

, orchestrated the second half of the first movement and the whole of the fourth. In the latter, Messiaen had intended to include a free meter sequence based on birdsong transcriptions. To write it, Loriod used sketches discarded from his opera Saint François d'Assise. She also added a chorus of bells from the same source

The first movement features a Garden Warbler

Garden Warbler

The Garden Warbler, Sylvia borin, is a common and widespread typical warbler which breeds throughout northern and temperate Europe into western Asia. This small passerine bird is strongly migratory, and winters in central and southern Africa...

 (piano solo), birds of New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

: blue-wattled crow

Crow

Crows form the genus Corvus in the family Corvidae. Ranging in size from the relatively small pigeon-size jackdaws to the Common Raven of the Holarctic region and Thick-billed Raven of the highlands of Ethiopia, the 40 or so members of this genus occur on all temperate continents and several...

, bush canary

Yellowhead (bird)

The Yellowhead or Mohua is a small insectivorous, passerine bird endemic to the South Island of New Zealand...

 and Kakapo

Kakapo

The Kakapo , Strigops habroptila , also called owl parrot, is a species of large, flightless nocturnal parrot endemic to New Zealand...

. The second movement is an orchestral transcription of Messiaen's own Vocalise of 1935, whilst the third features the Lyrebird

Lyrebird

A Lyrebird is either of two species of ground-dwelling Australian birds, that form the genus, Menura, and the family Menuridae. They are most notable for their superb ability to mimic natural and artificial sounds from their environment. Lyrebirds have unique plumes of neutral coloured...

 (cello solo), the Musician Wren

Musician Wren

The Musician Wren or Organ Wren is a species of wren named for its elaborate song. It is native to the Amazon Rainforest in South America, and west and southwestwards into the Amazonian Andes. In Portuguese it is known as Uirapuru or many other variants of this name, all based on the Tupi wirapu 'ru...

 (flute) and the Garden Warbler in dialogue with the Natal Robin on percussion. The final completed movement features a wide range of birds including the Bell Bird, Golden Oriole

Golden Oriole

The Eurasian Golden Oriole or simply Golden Oriole is the only member of the oriole family of passerine birds breeding in northern hemisphere temperate regions...

, Capercaillie

Capercaillie

The Western Capercaillie , also known as the Wood Grouse, Heather Cock or Capercaillie , is the largest member of the grouse family, reaching over 100 cm in length and 6.7 kg in weight. The largest one ever recorded in captivity had a weight of 7.2 kg....

 and Black-Throated Diver

Black-throated Diver

The Black-throated Loon is a migratory aquatic bird found in the northern hemisphere. The species is known as an Arctic Loon in North America and the Black-throated Diver in Eurasia, its current name is a compromise proposed by the International Ornithological Committee.-Taxonomy:The...

 amongst many others.

The premiere of the work took place on 26th September 1994, with Loriod (piano), Holliger (oboe), Mstislav Rostropovich

Mstislav Rostropovich

Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich, KBE , known to close friends as Slava, was a Soviet and Russian cellist and conductor. He was married to the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. He is widely considered to have been the greatest cellist of the second half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest of...

 (cello) and Catherine Cantin (flute) with the Orchestre de l'Opéra Bastille

Opéra Bastille

L'Opéra Bastille ' is a modern opera house in Paris, France. It is the home base of the Opéra national de Paris and was designed to replace the Palais Garnier, which is nowadays mainly used for ballet performances....

 under Myung-Whun Chung

Myung-Whun Chung

Myung-whun Chung is a South Korean pianist and conductor.His sisters, violinist Kyung-wha Chung, and cellist Myung-wha Chung, and he at one time performed together as the Chung Trio. He was a joined second-prize winner in the 1974 International Tchaikovsky Competition. Chung studied conducting at...

. The four soloists and conductor were the piece's joint dedicatees. The same forces recorded the work for CD the following day. The score was published by Editions Leduc in 2003.