Messiaen Vingt Regards Sur L'enfant Jesus (nos. 1 6) Anton Batagov (1990)

Steven Osborne has only twice before been mentioned in the review pages of Gramophone: Andrew Achenbach found his playing ‘outstandingly sensitive and dashing’ in concertos by Mackenzie and Tovey (Hyperion‚ 10/98)‚ while Roger Thomas appreciated his wit in the jazzinflected sonatas of Nikolai Kapustin (Hyperion‚ 8/00). He faces a much tougher job in Messiaen’s Vingt Regards: not only music of exceptional difficulty but a score of which there are seven rival recordings currently available‚ six of them very good indeed.

"A giant fresco, a kind of odyssey," is Bertrand Chamayou's description of Olivier Messiaen's piano masterwork, Vingt Regards sur L'Enfant-Jésus. Written in 1944, it is a monumental, mystical and iridescent sequence of 20 gazes or contemplations on the infant Jesus. Messiaen once wrote that "The drama of my life is that I have written religious music for an audience that has no faith." Bertrand Chamayou feels that the Vingt Regards "is a mystical rather than a religious experience… It arouses the same kind of awe as walking into a magnificent cathedral or seeing a glorious sunset. You feel that time stops." Chamayou first played the work in 2008, Messiaen's centenary year, but it has been part of his life since he was nine years old.

"You love us, sweet Jesus: that we had forgotten," wrote Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) in the preface to "Offrandes oublieés" of 1930. Much of religiOUS art, with its artificially circumscribed expression and stylised piety, has contributed to this tendency to forget, and it was something Messiaen also fought against in his organ suite "La Nativité du Seigneur" of 1935. While a prisonelcof-war in 1941, during the Second World Wal; Messiaen wrote his "Quatuor pour la fin du temps" at Stalag VIII in Silesia.

Gramophone
Another Vingt regards from an unexpected source, and this time no mere stopgap. Alice Ader's interpretation has clearly been prepared with devotion and insight, and the recordings (made in the studios of Radio France over nine days) reflect similar dedication on the part of the Adda team. The resulting blend of clarity and warmth, with the piano in an excellent perspective, is greatly superior to Continuum's clear but noisy recording for Malcolm Troup; and Alice Ader's playing is on an altogether higher level than Troup's. If in the final analysis this is only one of the finest Vingt regards on record, that's mainly because Alice Ader does not have quite the power and panache to make the most tumultuous climaxes `vibrate'—the great shout of joy at the height of No. 10 is a case in point. But her finesse and agility are still to be treasured; if and when more towering versions appear (or are reissued) hers should still have a place of honour.

Håkan Austbø has excellent credentials in this repertoire. His is an individual view, with a wider range of tempi and dynamic than Loriod. His account of the opening Regard du père and the later Regard du fils sur le fils is paced much more slowly, but his playing has great concentration and evocative feeling so that he readily carries the slower tempo, and in Par lui tout a été fait articulation is bolder, giving the music a stronger profile, helped by the clearer, Naxos digital focus. This is undoubtedly a performance that grips the listener and can be strongly recommended as an alternative view.