Yvonne Loriod

Yvonne Loriod (1924¬–2010) is well known in musical circles as an outstanding pianist and one of the most significant interpreters of 20th century French music who was primarily an advocate of the creative works of her husband Olivier Messiaen. It was not widely known until the past few years that Loriod was also a composer. Only when the joint estate of the couple Messiaen-Loriod was presented to the Bibliotheque nationale in Paris in 2016, was her compositional activity from the 1940s up to the early 1950s rediscovered and her works have been performed ever since. An image has emerged through her compositions of an audacious and inquisitive composer who was receptive to the influences of non-European music and also devoted herself to the study of electronic music.

Yvonne Loriod was born on 20 January 1924 in a suburb of Paris and grew up in a family who greatly valued music. Like her younger sister Jeanne who also became a professional musician, Yvonne began playing the piano while still a child. Yvonne Loriod displayed exceptional talent, mastering both volumes of J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Klavier, all of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas and numerous piano concertos by Mozart by the age of 14. She was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire in 1938 aged only 16.

At this time, the Conservatoire and contemporary musical circles in Paris were a focal point of the avant-garde. Yvonne Loriod, who also studied composition with Darius Milhaud alongside the piano, became actively involved in these artistic developments. She was for example one of the first students to enrol in the harmony classes given by Olivier Messiaen in 1941 and attend his pioneering courses. Among her fellow students was Pierre Boulez with whom she swiftly developed a close friendship while being an intense supporter of his piano music.

In 1948, she took up her own influential piano teaching position at the famous institution and her compositional activity drifted increasingly into the background. Following a guest professorship in Karlsruhe, she was appointed as professor for piano at the Paris Conservatoire, a post she retained up to her acquisition of emeritus status in 1989. Among many others, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Roger Muraro and Kent Nagano studied the piano with her. She participated as a visiting lecturer at the Darmstadt Summer School for contemporary music on several occasions. She performed as a pianist in numerous countries including England, Spain and the USA in 1949, Japan in 1962 and several tours across the USA and Canada during the 1970s.

She developed a unique artistic relationship with Messiaen. It was Loriod’s consummate virtuosity which prompted Messiaen to focus many of his compositions on the piano. Loriod adopted almost all of his piano compositions into her repertoire. They were also attracted to one another on a private level and married relatively soon after the death of Messiaen’s first wife in 1961.