Messiaen: Vingt Regards sur l'enfant Jésus

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Few possess the spiritual, emotional and physical stamina required for a successful interpretation of Messiaen's transcendent. Recorded on the back of a series of well-received concert performances,... — BBC Music Magazine, October 2002 More…

Catalogue No: CDA67351-2
Label: Hyperion
Length: 2 hours 6 minutes

Gramophone Magazine

October 2002

Editor's Choice

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Usually despatched within 1 working day

Messiaen: Vingt Regards sur l'enfant Jésus

Work length2:06:22

$22.00

$30.00

$41.00

Steven Osborne (piano)

I. Regard du Père

Track length8:11

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II. Regard de l'Étoile

Track length2:50

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III. L'échange

Track length3:38

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IV. Regard de la Vierge

Track length5:04

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V. Regard du Fils sur le Fils

Track length6:53

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VI. Par Lui tout à été fait

Track length9:41

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VII. Regard de la Croix

Track length4:27

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VIII. Regard des hauteurs

Track length2:14

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IX. Regard du Temps

Track length2:45

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X. Regard de l’Esprit de joie

Track length8:40

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XI. Première communion de la Vierge

Track length7:51

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XII. La parole toute puissante

Track length2:19

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XIII. Noël

Track length4:11

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XIV. Regard des Anges

Track length4:50

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XV. Le baiser de l’Enfant-Jésus

Track length11:42

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XVI. Regards des prophètes, des bergers et des Mages

Track length3:09

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XVII. Regard du silence

Track length5:31

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XVIII. Regard de l'Onction terrible

Track length6:23

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XIX. Je dors, mais mon cœur veille

Track length10:30

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XX. Regard de l'Église d'amour

Track length15:33

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Messiaen's Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jesus is one of the most grandly conceived works in the piano literature. It was composed in 1944 in Paris, during terribly troubled times. Although it met with a mixed critical reception, the Vingt Regards are now recognized as one of the most important piano works of the twentieth century. Steven Osborne is the ideal interpreter of this deeply religious, joyfully ecstatic music. He has played the complete Vingt Regards many times in concert, and after one performance at London's Wigmore Hall, The Independent wrote: "No pianist, surely, can have done it more justice Osborne had a wonderful sense of sweep and colour [and] had his listeners rapt for no less than two hours and 10 minutes without an interval. Even unbelievers might have felt like falling to their knees". Combining virtuoso aplomb with a deep spiritual understanding, we believe that this recording captures the atmosphere of this great music more than any other. Osborne's Messiaen is an overwhelming and intensely fulfilling musical experienceone not to be missed.

Reviews

October 2002

Few possess the spiritual, emotional and physical stamina required for a successful interpretation of Messiaen's transcendent. Recorded on the back of a series of well-received concert performances, Steven Osborne's new account certainly demonstrates these qualities in abundance.

2010

There are a number of recordings of Vingt Regards available, most of them very good indeed. Even the finest, though, provoke very slight reservations: an occasional suspicion of hurry in Pierre-Laurent Aimard's outstanding account, a few misjudgments in Roger Muraro's, and so on. There are no such reservations about the reading by Steven Osborne, who's revealed as a pianist of exceptional gifts.
Messiaen's widow, Yvonne Loriod, invited Osborne to study the work with her after she heard him playing other music by her late husband.
One can hear throughout not only her influence but, even more, the qualities in his playing that led her to make the offer. His command of sonority is prodigious: if you've never been able to take Messiaen's talk about the 'colour' of particular chords seriously, then Osborne's playing may change your mind. He also has a remarkable dynamic range. These two qualities combine to provide both clarity and a tremendous climax in the virtuoso quasifugal textures of No 6 ('By Him was everything made') and, at the other end of the spectrum, to make perfect sense of Messiaen's description of the opening bars of No 17 ('The Gaze of Silence'): 'the music seems to emerge from silence as colours emerge from the night.' Nor is he insensible to the fact that some of the Regards are frankly showy. No 10 ('Gaze of the Spirit of Joy') is dazzling; No 16 ('Gaze of the Prophets, the Shepherds and the Magi') is barbarously colourful. Perhaps most significant of all, he finds in No 15 ('The kiss of the child Jesus') not only the sweet quietness of its opening but the spectacular Lisztian display of its later pages. The recording is ideally responsive to the wide range of sound he draws from the instrument.

A performance of commanding virtuosity, deep poetry and ravishing colour

Messiaen: Vingt Regards sur l'enfant Jésus

2 CDs

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