What more thrilling a start to a concert cycle could there be than Olivier Messiaen’s bombastic Turangalîla Symphony? The composer Olivier Messiaen’s approximate definition of the ancient Indian word «Turangalîla» was «at once love song, a hymn to joy, time, movement, rhythm, life and death». He was a mystic of ecstasy, who could hear colours and see sounds; an ornithologist who set birds’ songs of praise to music; an avant-garde pioneer who steered music in a new direction; a Catholic inspired by unshakeable faith; a gifted teacher – and his works dazzle just like his personality. Incidentally, it was Leonard Bernstein who conducted the premiere in 1949 in Boston. Now Yutaka Sado, for many years Bernstein’s assistant, is bringing this monumental love song to sound with his orchestra: a towering work, a genuine twentieth-century classic, a hymn to music and the loving human being.