Conscientiously prepared recordings of Messiaen's two-piano devotional extravaganza continue to appear. I don't mean to damn with faint praise—to prepare such recordings conscientiously demands extraordinary dedication and skill—but the end result has to communicate more than conscientiousness if it is to do justice to the music. Gerard Bouwhuis and Cees van Zeeland certainly get closer to the awe-inspiring heart of the matter than do Lonskov and Llambias on Kontrapunkt or Niemann and Tilles on New Albion, and their instruments (unidentified, but to judge from their stentorian basses I would guess Bosendorfers) are richer in tone and more successfully recorded. But switch over to the composer and his wife (on Ades) and you are immediately in a different world—long-drawn chorales are suddenly hypnotic, crescendos spine-tingling, expressive melodies ecstatic, Lisztian bravura passages buffeted by unashamedly late-romantic surges, and so on.
On the other hand, it would be a shame to miss out on the Ives Quarter-tone Pieces. If you can get over the initial disorientation (it struck me as the aural equivalent of being force-fed sour milk) there is certainly something compelling here; the ragtime rhythms in the second piece are like Joplin on a bad trip. Van Zeeland's own Initials gives you no such easy handle; determinedly neutral and non-referential in its language, this music is thoroughly musicianly in its design, by no means faceless, but for me at least without the striking poetic identity which might encourage closer acquaintance.'