Messiaen is one of the great musical geniuses of the 20th century and beyond, and we have yet to catch up to him. But once you get past the dissonance, which really isn't as dissonant as all that, his music has one big problem. Most of his scores are TOO F---ING LONG!!! Maybe future generations will be more forgiving just as our generation is to Mahler, but Mahler is operating out of the long Austro-German tradition of symphonic form, a form designed to sustain long-term interest, and his symphonies manage to be more interesting over 70 minutes than composers as great as Schumann or Mendelssohn often are over 30 minutes (let alone Bruckner....).
Messiaen greatness is beyond disute, but however mathematically complex and precise his music is in conception, the thematic blips and bloops can sound so random that there is no way there is 2 hours of sustained interest in so many of those extravagant long form works of his, however beguiling individual movements can be.
On the other hand, Oiseaux Exotiques is just about the perfect length for its ideas' quantity, and its 13 1/2 minutes are packed with invention by the riot. It is easily one of the great 20th century scores. The first four minutes and forty seconds are just enough to make set up what, for lack of a better term, sounds like an 'aviary explosion.' It is, quite simply, one of the most fascinating passages in 20th century music, and there has never been a better recording than Riccardo Chailly conducting the Royal Concertgebouw with Jean-Yves Thibaudet on the piano. If From the Canyon to the Stars or Colors of the Celestial City were even twice this length rather than 100 minutes, they might be programmed in every orchestral season.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmjETPAkF70
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