ATMA'S Oscar Connection: Oraison by Olivier Messiaen Featured on the Soundtrack of The Revenant

MONTREAL, QUEBEC--(Marketwired - Feb. 1, 2016) - ATMA Classique will release Olivier Messaien's Oraison digitally on February 5, 2016. This track from the composer's 1937 work Fetes des belles eaux is included on the soundtrack of The Revenant, the critically acclaimed film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. Oraison is performed on the ondes Martenot - an early electronic instrument invented by and named after Maurice Martenot - by the Ensemble d'ondes de Montréal (Jean Laurendeau, Marie Bernard, Suzanne Binet-Audet, Geneviève Grenier, Estelle Lemire).

The Revenant recently won a Golden Globe for best dramatic film and has garnered twelve Oscar nominations. The film explores the fight for survival of Hugh Glass, a frontiersman on a fur trading expedition in the 1820s. After being mauled by a bear and left for dead by members of his own hunting team, Glass must endure the harsh elements as he seeks vengeance. He even spends a night inside the carcass of a dead horse so as not to freeze to death. It is when he wakes from this grueling night that we hear Messiaen's Oraison.

ATMA's recording of Messaien's Fetes des belles eaux is described as "deeply expressive music that unfolds naturally and completely persuasively. The piece is revelatory in the variety of timbres the Ondes is capable of producing; it can sound like an über-cello, or a recorder consort, or take on a glistening gamelan-like delicacy." (Ariama.com)

The Revenant Trailer: http://bit.ly/1Hz1VRB