Messiaen: Vingt Regards Sur L'Enfant Jesus
Messiaen'sVingt Regardsis a monumental work whose 20 pieces, each with a programmatic religious-spiritual title, run over two hours and demand a pianist, like Steven Osborne, with the virtuosity and idiomatic mastery to do them justice. To the unwary, there's a contradiction between the music's elevated spiritual concerns and the richly textured sounds that reach the ear, especially since those sounds are bathed in sensuous harmonies and modernist chords. But while religiously inspired music is usually austere, Messiaen's color-drenched sound world is his analogy for spiritual transcendence. On another plane, this work is an adventure in exciting listening--from the hushed mysteries of the first Regard to the rhetorically powerful final "Theme of God." Once heard, theVingt Regardscan't be forgotten, as they teem with inventiveness and originality, still sounding fresh 60 years after they were written. Osborne's performance is among the best on disc: virtuosic, well-paced, with a huge dynamic range, fiery in the explosive moments and caressingly sweet in the contemplative ones. Engineering and notes are exemplary, too.--Dan Davis