Mood music from
Messiaen, anyone? With performances and recordings this fine, the offer is hard to resist, but the question remains: what mood? With
Messiaen, it's often hard to tell. Or, to be more precise, it's easy to tell when the composer is calm or excited, but it's not so easy to tell what he's calm or excited about. Yet in this superlative collection of performances, the music is always immediately effective, even if it's difficult to know exactly what the effect is. Sometimes, as in "The Resurrection" and the "Song of the Star Aldebaran" from Des canyons aux étoiles..., the effect is weirdly exhilarating. Other times, as in the "Garden of Love's Sleep" from the Turangalîla-Symphonie, the effect is nearly narcotic. And as often as not, it's highly erotic though disguised by religious titles as in "Abide in Love" from Eclairs sur l'Au-Dela. Drawn almost entirely from recent Deutsche Grammophon recordings, five of the eight performances here are directed by
Myung-Whun Chung. In the four orchestral works,
Chung keeps things well under control with stately tempos and restrained dynamics until the inevitable overwhelming climax when
Chung grabs hold even tighter and thereby refuses to reduce the effect to mere bombast. One work here, the "Eulogy to the Immortality of Jesus" from Quatuor pour la fin du temps, is played with rapt concentration by violinist
Luben Yordanoff and pianist
Daniel Barenboim in the presence of the composer. Another, The Heavenly Feast, is performed with relentless intensity by
Olivier Latry on the organ of Notre Dame in Paris. And the last is "The Kiss" of the Infant from Vingt Regards sur l'enfant des l'enfant-Jésus, in a hauntingly inward account by English pianist
John Ogdon recorded in 1969. Taken all together, the performances here represent
Messiaen at his blissed out best and anyone looking for a single-disc introduction to his music could not find better.