COMPOSERS: Messiaen
LABELS: Calliope
ALBUM TITLE: Messiaen
WORKS: La nativite du Seigneur, Le banquet celeste, Apparition de l'eglise eternelle
PERFORMER: Louis Thiry
CATALOGUE NO: CAL 4928
When this recording first appeared,
accounts of Messiaen’s first proper
organ cycle, La nativité du Seigneur,
could be counted on one hand with
fingers to spare. This pioneering
performance has been rightly fêted,
but the bar has been raised in the past
30 years. Moreover, Messiaen’s music
often brings the best out of organists, and the nine meditations of La
nativité are no exception.
Still, Thiry has a formidable
instrument, the Metzler organ at
Saint-Pierre in Geneva, which is up to
the task of capturing the full palette of
Messiaen’s registrations. This would
be to no avail were it not for Thiry’s
own impressive credentials in this
repertoire as well as a recording that
was not far from demonstration class
at the time. There’s an atmosphere
of hushed expectancy in ‘La vièrge et
l’Enfant’ and brutal power in ‘Jésus
accepte la souffrance’. That said,
the Epiphany could be a week later
judging by his plodding ‘Les mages’.
As well as the reissue of Messiaen’s
own performance (EMI), Thiry has
been overtaken by more recent ones.
Jennifer Bate (Regis), Gillian Weir
(Priory) and Oliver Latry (DG), each
have more vibrancy. Alongside these,
Thiry sounds straitlaced in ‘Dieu
parmi nous’, and this isn’t polite
music. Christopher Dingle