From Le banquet celeste of 1926 to the Livre du Saint Sacrement of 1984, Messiaen's organ works represent an extraordinary confessional testament, musical and spiritual. Seven great cycles (plus a handful of single pieces) stand as monumental staging posts in the artistic development of one of the supreme creative geniuses of our time. No complete oeuvre of any other composer for the organ since Bach has a stronger claim to the attentions of the general musical public. That claim is certainly strengthened by Gillian Weir's new complete recording, made in association with BBC Radio 3 and engineered by Danish Radio.
It almost beggars belief that this huge project (nearly seven hours of music, some of it of transcendental difficulty) was recorded in just two sets of sessions, totalling seven days in all, in January and February earlier this year. I should say immediately that there are no signs of haste, rather a compelling consistency that is entirely distinctive. Weir's virtuosity and technical control are staggering. I have never heard the profuse bravura and bird-song material delivered with such eclat. But that only goes a little way to explaining the unshakeable conviction and certainty she conveys throughout. Where some interpreters immerse themselves in the numinous and pictorial aspects of Messiaen, the Catholic mystic—a stance Messiaen himself seemed to encourage—Weir, however, never loses sight of the inherent qualities of the music itself, its prodigal invention and overall structure. The musical characterization is immensely incisive and purposeful, with even the luscious extrement lent passages maintaining direction and momentum, not languishing in a murky cloud of incense. This balance of heart and head gives an architectural strength not just to individual movements, but also to complete cycles, particularly the Meditations (1969) and the Livre du Saint Sacrement. While Jennifer Bate's devoted, though sometimes docile complete set for Unicorn-Kanchana could be summed up in the word ''Adoro'', Weir's definitely proclaims ''Credo''.
Both the choice of organ and recording perspective are in absolute accord with this approach. The Aarhus Cathedral organ, built by Frobenius in 1928 (with additions in 1940 and revoiced in 1980) possesses ringing mixtures, imported French reeds (including a blistering 32-foot-reed, used with discrimination) and a full range of softer colours which never retreat into ecclesiastical obscurity. The four to five second resonance of the church provides a background glow for an imposing, clear organ image. For Jennifer Bate, the generous acoustics of Beauvais Cathedral provide a hugely atmospheric frame for a more recessed organ sound: evocative rather than detailed. Messiaen's own La Trinite, as heard on his 1956 EMI and 1972 Erato sets (as well as Bate's Livre de Saint Sacrement), is uniquely beautiful in acoustic and poetic organ sonority (except for querulously out-of-tune reeds a la francaise in the earlier recordings).
Some may feel that Weir occasionally exercises too steely a grip in some of the earlier works. ''Les bergers'' and ''Les mages'' (La nativite) lack something of the charm of Messiaen's 1956 recording and the slow section of Diptyque is somewhat too fast to be properly ecstatic. (Messiaen's own control of rubato in very slow tempos is immensely subtle.) I was also surprised by her use of a Cornet for the opening of ''Alleluias sereins'' (L'ascension) rather than the more open-hearted choir of 8, 4 and 2-foot stops specified by the composer. But Le banquet celeste boasts an immaculately poised staccato melody (in the pedal) and the melancholic Cornet solo in ''Le Verbe'' (the musical and theological centre of La nativite) is delivered in a manner beyond praise. The two famous show-stoppers amongst the early works, ''Transports de joie'' (L'ascension) and ''Dieu parmi nous'' (La nativite), are full of thrilling, elemental rhetoric.
But with Les corps glorieux (1939), and the succeeding works, Weir seems to bring a special intensity. Messiaen's deployment and rearrangement of highly contrasted blocks of material risks disjointedness: Weir conveys a sense of unimpeachable structural logic. The numerous unaccompanied melodies (often plainchant or plainchant derived) are quite beautifully and pliably shaped, as if from performing experience of the chant in liturgy. Bate's handling of these passages is often disappointingly prosaic (I could quote chapter and verse, though space forbids). And incidentally, pace Messiaen's much-quoted approval, one also can't help noting her frequent difficulty in fulfilling his explicit legato markings in sustained harmonies.
However Weir's immaculate command of line is matched by her rhythmic sense. She invests the concentrated Messe de la Pentecote (1950) with a proud, hieratic, ritual processional quality and characteristically refuses to inflate (as so many do) the affecting, sensual quotation from the Turangalila-Symphonie at the end of the Communion (it is marked vif after all). The ''Sortie'' is pure incandescence. In the Livre d'orgue—a fantastic score of ruthless organizational discipline, encompassing objective counterpoint of Bachian purity and sheer, apocalyptic terror—she steers a course veering unerringly between fastidious delicacy (the two Trios and ''Soixante-quatre durees'') and remorseless implacability (''Les Mains de l'abime'' and ''Les Yeux dans les roues''). For me the Messe and the Livre are the highlights of this set: fascinating, challenging music in totally gripping performances.
Weir gave the British premiere of the Meditations sur le mystere de la Saint Trinite (1969), arguably the most stylistically well-balanced and well-integrated of all Messiaen's organ works, and wittily dominated by the song of the yellowhammer. In ''Meditation VI'', a resplendent fantasy on chant themes for the Epiphany, Messiaen himself (on Erato in 1972) is the more spacious and gripping. That is only a marginal disappointment for both here and in the 18-movement Livre du Saint Sacrement I was forcibly struck by the sheer youthfulness of the music and the relish of Weir's playing. There is never the slightest feeling that either of these enormous cycles (75 and 100 minutes respectively) is in any way long-winded. True, some of the tempos in the Livre, though by no means all, are on the quick side: Weir plays the opening movement, ''Adoro te'' twice as fast as Bate (whose performance has always seemed to me rather dutiful and lacking inner fire, though the sonorities are marvellous) while Almut Rossler, who gave the world premiere (Motette—a fine performance), wisely splits the difference. The central movement is an extended meditation on the Risen Christ's appearance to Mary Magdalen. Weir is marvellous here, the most vivid of storytellers, and the approach to the final ''Offrande et Alleluia final'', through a sequence of prayers and toccatas is compulsively exciting and satisfying in her hands, even more so than with Rossler.
On coming to the end of the Livre du Saint Sacrement I could not help recalling Messiaen's own description of the L'Orgue Mystique of Charles Tournemire, Franck's successor at Ste Clotilde, a mentor to the young Olivier himself and whose work strikingly pre-echoes Messiaen's own. Messiaen could almost be holding up a mirror to his own organ output as he writes (in 1938): ''… a stained-glass window in sound where the fortissimo of the organ unfurls its splendour and prolongs time … The sumptuousness of its harmonies, the changing gleams of its cameleon-like modes, the precious stones of its mixtures and most of all the joyful fantasy of its alleluia melodies seem to piece the matter with the subtlety of a glorified body, make it an artistic wonder of the most dazzling originality, semi-gothic, semi ultra-modern.''
Gratitude to Collins Classics (and BBC Radio 3)—not least for preserving the central repertoire of a major and ridiculously under-recorded artist—is a little tempered by the uninspired artwork and the quality of the booklet-notes, which are at best variable, and in the case of the later works, inadequate. Titles are not translated and Messiaen's supporting Scriptural quotations are not given. Even so, this can hardly affect the recommendation of an achievement of outstanding musical integrity which happily complements Messiaen's own uniquely affecting, though sometimes technically fallible performances.PR