A performance to be seen, this is Richard Lainhart's interpretation of Oraison composed by Olivier Messiaen in 1937 for six Ondes Martenot.

The instrument he is playing is a Buchla 200e, a modular synthesizer, developed in the late 70's.
I started getting interested in these instruments two years ago when I was obsessed with Radiohead and have now moved on to owning something similar. These instruments are seldom recognized yet they are audible in most of the music we hear today, mostly emulated through computer programs.

To a greater extent I guess I wanted to illustrate how these are the unsung heroes of the musical world. They can produce the softest of recordings to the harshest of sounds yet most people have no clue what they are.