Messiaen Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jésus
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Olivier Messiaen
Label: Collins Classics
Magazine Review Date: 5/1996
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 128
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 7033-2
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| (20) Regards sur l'enfant Jésus |
Olivier Messiaen, Composer
Joanna MacGregor, Piano Olivier Messiaen, Composer |
Author: Michael Oliver
Joanna MacGregor is a pianist who combines fearless technique with great intelligence and imagination. When these qualities are matched by stunningly beautiful piano sound the likelihood of a distinguished account of the Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jesus is strong, and so it proves. Sheer beauty of colour is the outstanding virtue of this reading. MacGregor knows very well that some of these pieces require exquisitely vivid colour (the “superimposed rainbows” of No. 16, “Regard des prophetes”) while others need a narrower chromatic range but one of absolute clarity (the crystalline glistening of the first variation in No. 15, “La baiser de l’Enfant-Jesus”, the cycle’s ‘slow movement’). But she has few problems with the sheer strength needed elsewhere and only a couple of times did I get a slight impression that either she or the piano had reached its limits (at the height of No. 6, the tumultuous “Par Lui tout a ete fait”) or that a little more dynamic variation would have aided her brilliant colour contrasts (in the second development section of No. 10, “Regard de l’esprit de joie”). Elsewhere, not least in the huge finale, her playing has commanding power and grandeur.
Her precision, too, is admirable: all those passages where Messiaen requires the two hands to be doing quite different things are splendidly clear. Above all, perhaps, she communicates a real love for the sound-world of this cycle, which is just as often sensuous and pianistic as it is mystical. We are not short of good recordings of the Vingt regards, but MacGregor’s is probably the most sheerly beautiful of them all. Yvonne Loriod has great authority and a tireless strength that MacGregor cannot match on one or two pages, but she also has an occasional tendency to hurry, and the recorded sound is a touch hard. Peter Hill finds at times subtler shadings and occasionally allows silences to register more magically, but his instrument is not quite as superb nor so finely recorded as MacGregor’s. The same is true of Hakon Austbo’s performance, otherwise exceptionally good and exceptionally cheap. This new version, made in the concert-hall at Snape on an extremely fine Steinway, is the best piano recording I have heard for a long while, but the central achievement here is MacGregor’s perception of Messiaen’s prodigal invention of sonorities.'
Her precision, too, is admirable: all those passages where Messiaen requires the two hands to be doing quite different things are splendidly clear. Above all, perhaps, she communicates a real love for the sound-world of this cycle, which is just as often sensuous and pianistic as it is mystical. We are not short of good recordings of the Vingt regards, but MacGregor’s is probably the most sheerly beautiful of them all. Yvonne Loriod has great authority and a tireless strength that MacGregor cannot match on one or two pages, but she also has an occasional tendency to hurry, and the recorded sound is a touch hard. Peter Hill finds at times subtler shadings and occasionally allows silences to register more magically, but his instrument is not quite as superb nor so finely recorded as MacGregor’s. The same is true of Hakon Austbo’s performance, otherwise exceptionally good and exceptionally cheap. This new version, made in the concert-hall at Snape on an extremely fine Steinway, is the best piano recording I have heard for a long while, but the central achievement here is MacGregor’s perception of Messiaen’s prodigal invention of sonorities.'
Messiaen Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jésus
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