Tamara Stefanovich, Pierre-Laurent Aimard pfs

Pentatone 

‘Colour sorcerer, light architect, time illusionist.’ That is how Tamara Stefanovich describes Olivier Messiaen. Here she joins her husband Pierre-Laurent Aimard in the composer’s Visions de l’Amen (1943) – seven frescoes en route from Quatuor pour la fin du temps to Vingt Regards sur l’enfant-Jésus. ‘I played [this music] from the age of 15, turned the pages when Yvonne Loriod and Messiaen performed it, worked on it with him … this piece is my home,’ says Aimard.

Finely judged tempos and dynamics, tempered percussiveness, tight co-ordination and fantastical timbres combine to make this release indispensable. The players dazzle with their impassioned chemistry and engrained authority, responding poetically to the composer’s demands at every moment. The result is an orgy of vitrified chords, shifting tectonics, vulcan fires, blazing starbursts and cosmic silences.

Three tintinnabulary solos complete the album. From Aimard, Enescu’s haunting ‘Carillon nocturne’ (1916), presciently Messiaenic in its bell tones, and Birtwistle’s ‘Clock IV’ (1998). From Stefanovich, Knussen’s Prayer Bell Sketch (1997, in memoriam Takemitsu). A gripping 20th-century traversal.