Messiaen: La Fauvette des jardins (Garden Warbler)

“Bessette walks your ears inside the moving cogs of Messiaen's mosaic structure, where many pianists merely float them along its surface. From the clangourous timpani of resonating strikes at the opening to her responsive treatment of Messiaen's transforming block-chord sequences, this performance has a rare depth of aural perspective. ...reminding us that Cantéyodjayâ is the link between the interlocking cycles inside Vingt Regards and the more fragmented Catalogue d'oiseaux.” Gramophone Magazine, December 2009

“Cantéyodjayâ is one of Messiaen's greatest free-standing keyboard pieces, an extraordinary explosion of rhythmic energy and virtuosity, whose method of arranging ideas like a mosaic opened a new phase in his development. Its power and strength are balanced at the other end of the disc by the biggest of all the solo-piano bird pieces, La Fauvette des Jardins, The Garden Warbler, which is all that Messiaen completed (in 1970) of what might have been another volume of the Catalogue d'Oiseaux. Bessette plays them both with a great deal of understanding…” The Guardian, 3rd July 2009 ***

“The exclusively 20th-century programme presents great challenges to Reinhold Friedrich and Iveta Apkalna which they meet with tremendous brilliance and élan. …it's fascinating to hear the constantly changing role of the two instruments, ranging from virtuoso solo passages through to dialogue which alternates between tension and serenity. A very rewarding CD which repays repeated hearings.” Gramophone Magazine, February 2009

“No reservations…about Peter Hill's masterly set of the piano music, longheld in esteem by Messiaen-lovers,. Technical control, characterisation, colour, 'clarté': it's all here. Few if any pianists play the first and last movements of Vingt regards so slowly. Few approached his sense of a majestic mystery.” BBC Music Magazine, November 2008 *****

“Throughout‚ Hill limns Messiaen’s heady‚ quasi pantheistic amalgam of rapture and stillness‚ evocation and exultation with illuminating exuberance…Hill is supported by a recording of satisfyingly huge range…In Benjamin Frith, Hill has a duo partner as responsive to Messiaen’s demands for subtlety of colour and delicacy of texture as he is himself.” Gramophone Magazine

“…her playing is nothing short of magnificent – superb range of sonority, rock-sure rhythm, unfailing attention to polyphonic strands, thrilling attack and tender caress in equal measure. … Under her touch there seems to be no such thing as a worn-out harmony or an unmusical one.” Gramophone Magazine (on Yvonne Loriod's piano performances on these CDs)

“Messiaen's own performance of the large organ cycle Méditations sur le mystère de la Sainte-Trinité is included amongst the goodies on offer here. …it is thoroughly compulsive listening, and definitive only in that it reveals just how much leeway is permitted. ...Yvonne Loriod, Messiaen's second wife... can be heard on 14 of the 26 works, many of them classic performances. There may be better sounding versions of the Vingt regards, but she is still riveting - the fearsome 'Par Lui tout a été fait' has rarely sounded more exciting.” BBC Music Magazine, October 2005