Release Date: 01 October 2004
Label: Hyperion Records Ltd
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 034571173665
Genres: Classical Solo Instrumental
Description
Steven Osborne has already made his name as an outstanding interpreter of Messiaen with his ecstatic recording of the Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jesus (Hyperion, CDA67351/2), which was described by Gramophone as ‘one of Hyperion’s finest piano recordings—quite an achievement in a catalogue of outstanding piano discs’. Here he is joined by Martin Roscoe in an equally revelatory account of Messiaen’s other great religious piano cycle, this time for two pianos, the Visions de l’Amen, composed a year before Vingt Regards in 1943. Their combination of emotional power, religious austerity, keyboard colour and dazzling pyrotechnics makes for an overwhelming and physically exhilarating experience. The listener is given an insight to what it must have been like to have heard the premiere of this work, played by Messiaen with his future wife, the immensly gifted 19-year-old Yvonne Loriod, to a strictly invited audience in Occupied Paris.
Steven Osborne plays three solo pieces to complete the disc. The Rondeau was composed at the same time as Visions de l’Amen, but is much less musically (although no less technically) ambitious. The other two pieces were composed in the 1930s, one in a more light-hearted vein, the other a contribution to a memorial volume for Paul Dukas, who died in 1935.
Tracklisting
Roberto Prosseda, London Philharmonic Orchestra / Nir Kabaretti
The Brabant Ensemble / Stephen Rice
Steven Isserlis
The Nash Ensemble
MultiPiano Ensemble, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin / Ivor Bolton
Marc-Andre Hamelin
Marc-Andre Hamelin, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra / Andrew Litton
Gothic Voices / Christopher Page
Nora von Marschall
Lea Suter
Aart Bergwerff
Ran Jia
Johannes Krahl
Elke Volker
Henry Fairs
Pieter van Dijk
