This performance is part of the Aspect of Adès Festival, April 1-9 at Walt Disney Concert Hall

Messiaen's ecstatic and amazing final work for orchestra, Éclairs sur l’Au-Delà (Illuminations of the Beyond), was completed in 1991; he did not live hear the premiere. It shares with his other large-scale orchestral pieces a sense of otherworldly grandeur, obsessively repeated rhythmic and melodic patterns, birdcalls, and a riot of orchestral color. Lasting an hour, the piece is divided into 11 movements with titles like "The seven angels with the seven trumpets," "And God will wipe every tear from their eyes," and "Christ, light of paradise." Simon Rattle has said: “It’s a deeply moving masterpiece that tries to show the whole world as he sees it.”