Olivier Messiaen Biography

Along with Wit's Naxos recording, this is one of the best versions of Messiaen's phantasmagoric Turangalîla-Symphonie available, and it's very different: swifter, more obviously virtuosic in concept, perhaps a touch less warm in consequence, and engineered with greater “in your face” immediacy. The playing of the Concertgebouw, always a wonderful Messiaen orchestra, is stunning throughout. Chailly revels in the music's weirdness. The Ondes Martinot, for example, is particularly well captured. It's interesting how earlier performances tended to minimize its presence, perhaps for fear that is would sound silly, which of course it does, redeemed by the composer's utter seriousness and obliviousness to anything that smacks of humor. In any case, it's not all noise and bluster. The Garden of Love's Sleep is gorgeous, hypnotic, but happily still flowing, while the three Turangalîla rhythmic studies have remarkable clarity. Jean-Yves Thibaudet plays the solo piano part magnificently, really as well as anyone else ever has.

When, in 1931, Messiaen applied for his post as organist at La Trinité, he wrote to the curate to reassure him that he knew that ‘one must not disturb the piety of the faithful with wildly anarchic chords’. It is not known whether that curate was at La Trinité 20 years later, but it is hard to think of a more appropriate characterisation of the effect of Livre d’orgue than ‘wildly anarchic’, while Alexander Goehr has recalled how Messiaen’s organ-playing during the mid-1950s sounded like electronics. Michael Bonaventure’s playing may not have that effect, but he does get Messiaen’s music to lift off the page, even in the most rigorous pages of the Livre d’orgue. The organ of St Giles, Edinburgh, generally has the power and range of colour needed, with the fierce chords at the opening of ‘Les mains de l’abîme’ fizzing with tension. Slightly more power from the pedals would be welcome, notably in the dazzling central section of the fifth of the Méditations sur le mystère de la Sainte Trinité. Generally, though, this is a delight for the ears.