Hear every pipe of the Smith Square organ put through its paces this Christmas!

Completed in 1935, Messiaen's monumental La Nativité du Seigneur comprises nine meditations on scenes from the Christmas story. It is a work that is all at once beautiful, strange, and intensely moving - a kaleidoscope of colour and feeling. It is performed at Christmas the world over, perhaps because it contains that hallmark of great music: tension and release. A work for the ages, Messiaen composed La Nativité through the lens of his own vivid synaesthesia, blending western classical idioms with Indian and Greek rhythmic ideas, plainsong, Hindu ragas, birdsong, traditional keyboard forms, and an unwavering Catholic faith.