Messiaen has described Harawi as the first panel of his 'Tristan-triptych', the others being Turangalila and the Cinq rechants. One of the motives behind all three of them is the sublimation of an irresolvable emotional dilemma (at the time he wrote them Messiaen was deeply in love, but bound by duty and religious scruple to a wife who would live for 15 years after her brain had been destroyed by a cruel disease) but whereas Turangalila exults sensuously and the Cinq rechants are mysterious, intimate and visionary, Harawi is the only element of the trilogy that follows Tristan und Isolde in depicting a love so intense that its only end can be death. Here, however, the Liebestod (an obsessive, savagely terrifying rite of passage) is at the mid-point of the drama, not its end. What follows is hard to interpret (the peoms, by Messiaen himself, are surreal in imagery, and make frequent use of invented words and phrases in the ancient Peruvian language Quechua), but it seems to me no image of transfiguration or of reunion but a flight through the bitterness of loss into an eternal darkness where, and where only, desire can be stilled.
Yet despite its steadfast contemplation of an abyss where ecstasy and terror are scarcely distinguishable, it is a work of great beauty and vividness of imagination, but it will only seem so in a performance that can measure up to its formidable demands (on the title page Messiaen stipulates a ''grande soprano dramatique''). Short of Jessye Norman taking up the work (and even she would be taxed by its range) one could wish for no better than Jane Manning in her best voice, as she is here. She is not afraid of the bird-like high staccatos in the eighth song, nor of the vocal-cord-shattering shriek of ''ahi!'' at the end of the eleventh; she is no less at home in the frequent passages of throaty parlando chanting; she has the necessary beauty of tone for the tender lyricism of No. 5 (shockingly tender; the death-wish is already so strong that the lover pleads with the beloved to behead him) and she has the control for the passionate solemn farewell-chorale that follows the climactic death-song. And the absolute steadiness of the voice throughout is a joy in music that so often requires immaculate intonation but makes it so difficult to attain.
David Miller is a splendid partner, liquidly brilliant in the bird-song that here symbolizes ecstasy, excitingly percussive in the more barbarous passages, carefully clarifying textures everywhere. A most distinguished and compelling performance, and it has been outstanding cleanly recorded.'