Peter Hill’s extensive notes in the booklet are
one of the glories of this recording. Having worked with the composer,
he is well placed both to perform and comment on his music and especially
to describe how he came upon the manuscript score of
La fauvette
passerinette, a work almost completed in 1961 to the extent that
Messiaen wrote a note to himself to make a fair copy, then put aside
and presumably forgot when he embarked on larger-scale works.
With no benchmark, Peter Hill’s performance of this piece is likely
to prove authoritative and I also enjoyed his performances of the five
other Messiaen pieces on this album, but I could wish that he had given
us a complete disc of the composer’s piano works to rival his own authoritative
and inexpensive earlier recording of the
Catalogue d’oiseaux,
Books 4-6 on Regis RRC1109 (formerly Unicorn-Kanchana, also reissued
on 7 CDs, RRC7001, though not all dealers still have the multi-CD sets
and those who do are asking too much) or Carl-Axel Dominique’s of all
seven books, plus
La fauvette des jardins and
Petites Esquisses
on BIS-CD-594/6.
Delphian already had a very fine 2-CD set of Messiaen’s organ music
(DCD34076 –
review)
and a successor which I also enjoyed with small reservations (DCD34078
–
review)
and such an all-Messiaen disc from Hill would have been most welcome.
The Messiaen style is so distinctive that there is a very noticeable
change between George Benjamin’s
Fantasy (track 8) and
Le
traquet stapazin on track 9. Though it’s not one of the pieces
from the
Catalogue d’Oiseaux that I know particularly well, I
would have recognised it as Messiaen had I heard it with only half an
ear while listening to Radio 3.
At times Peter Sculthorpe’s
River (tr.12) comes close to the
Messiaen style: as Peter Hill notes, like Messiaen it begins in the
world of Debussy and Ravel but other influences are at play. The transition
from that to the newly-discovered
La fauvette passerinette is
not too abrupt but the Messiaen trademarks are unmistakeable, though
the piece represents a development from the
Catalogue d’Oiseaux.
I enjoyed the work, the performance and Peter Hill’s preface to it in
the notes, written in pseudo-Messiaen style.
The Ravel
Oiseaux tristes makes an excellent introduction to
the Messiaen pieces as illustrative of the kind of music from which
Messiaen developed and the Murail and Takemitsu works were both composed
in memory of the composer and accord in style with his music. The Stockhausen
pieces are relatively approachable for a composer who is normally well
outside my scope, but I can’t help feeling that an opportunity was lost
in not making this an all-Messiaen or more firmly Messiaen-centred recording.
I should add that Dominy Clements took a very different position, enjoying
the performances of the Messiaen as much as I did but finding the whole
a musical experience to treasure –
review.
Excellent performances, then, of the core Messiaen works, very well
recorded and even more superbly annotated in the booklet. Please may
we now have more Messiaen from Peter Hill and Delphian? Good as his
earlier recordings are and inexpensive as they are on Regis, there’s
room for a newer replacement.
Brian Wilson
Previous review:
Dominy
Clements
Track-listing :
Maurice RAVEL (1875-1937) Oiseaux tristes (from
Miroirs,
1904-5) [4:22]
Olivier MESSIAEN (1908-1992) La Colombe (from
Huit
préludes, 1928-9) [2:19];
Pièce pour le tombeau de Paul Dukas
(1935) [1:58];
Île de feu 1 (
Quatre études de rhythme,
1949-50) [2:05]
Karlheinz STOCKHAUSEN (1928-2007) Klavierstücke VII and
VIII (1954) [6:31 + 1:59]
Julian ANDERSON (b.1967) Etude No.1 [0:44]
George BENJAMIN (b.1960) Fantasy on Iambic Rhythm (1982-5) [12:20]
Olivier MESSIAEN Catalogue d’oiseaux :
Le Traquet stapazin
[13:55]
Henri DUTILLEUX (1916-2013) D’ombre et de silence [12:20]
Peter SCULTHORPE (b.1929) Stars (from
Night Pieces, 1972-3)
[1:39]
Douglas YOUNG (b.1947) River (from
Dreamlandscapes, Book
2, 1977-85) [6:07]
Olivier MESSIAEN La Fauvette passerinette (1961: premiere
recording) [11:00]
Tristan MURAIL (b.1947) Cloches d’adieu, et un sourire
… (
in memoriam Olivier Messiaen, 1992) [4:22]
Tôru TAKEMITSU (1930-1996) Rain Tree Sketch II (1992) [3:41]
Olivier MESSIAEN Morceau de lecture à vue (1924) [1:57]
