The majestic textural landscape, rich harmonic palette, wide dynamic contrasts and cosmic breadth characterising Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen best lend themselves to engineering that clarifies each piano’s distinct contributions yet also captures the way the instruments project and resonate across the footlights into a world-class concert venue. This is precisely what we get in this magnificent new recording from Tamara Stefanovich and Pierre-Laurent Aimard.

These seasoned musicians play both the acoustics and their pianos. In the slow opening movement, ‘Amen de la Création’, Piano 1’s billowy high-register chords and Piano 2’s declamatory themes mesh with impeccable ensemble unanimity and timbral perspective at a tempo that ideally splits the difference between the portentous Peter Serkin/Yuji Takahashi and the arguably hectic 1962 recording with Yvonne Loriod and Messiaen himself. Likewise, the joyful asymmetric phrases throughout ‘Amen des étoiles, de la planète à l’anneau’ have plenty of room to both dance and breathe, in contrast with the Argerich/Rabinovitch traversal’s neo-Prokofievian drive.

Although I’m riveted by the angular intensity that Nurit Tilles and the late Edmund Niemann (the American duo Double Edge) brought to ‘Amen de l’agonie de Jésus’, the present recording’s fuller-bodied deliberation adds up to more devastating cumulative impact in the climaxes. Also note the duo’s astute dynamic attentiveness. In the Bien modéré section, for example, the second piano’s fortissimo tune is carefully voiced alongside the first piano’s chords in the same register (left hand forte, right hand mezzo-forte). They also lay less heavily upon the overwrought final section of ‘Amen du Désir’ than most, while Aimard’s extended Piano 2 solo turn extracts gold from what must be the most loathsome and treacle-coated passage in Messaien’s creative output!

The fifth movement’s intimations of birdsong tweet to lighter and suppler effect than in most other recordings, and the compact sixth movement needs no special comment, since it poses the least challenge. The dignified sweep with which Stefanovich and Aimard shape the ‘Amen de la Consommation’ finale doesn’t minimise the music’s pompous browbeating, whereas this movement becomes more tolerable and fun to hear in the hands of Argerich and Rabinovitch, who simply play the hell out of it, full speed ahead.

Three solo pieces by other composers that either foreshadow or draw inspiration from Messaien’s sound world flesh out this release. Aimard plays Enescu’s ‘Carillon’ and Birtwistle’s ‘Clock IV’ incisively and gorgeously. Stefanovich offers an expansive and rounded rendition of Oliver Knussen’s Prayer Bell Sketch that differs markedly from Peter Serkin’s leaner, edgier recording (Koch, 11/00). The booklet notes include touching written comments from the performers and Nigel Simeone’s excellent essay about the works themselves. Highly recommended.