Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jésus (1944)
Petites Esquisses d’Oiseaux (1985)
Ciro Longobardi (piano)
rec. 2023, Artesuono Recording Studios, Cavalicco, Italy
Piano Classics PCL10246 [2 CDs: 135]
It is a wonderful thing that Messiaen’s great piano cycle nowadays attracts so many performances and recordings. The house was full for a performance I attended last year, and listeners are not put off by the length of the work, its modernist idiom or its flamboyant expression of religious faith. Indeed, the difficulties, which are considerable, are for the performer not the listener, but players are increasingly motivated to tackle them and add the work to their repertoire.
This new recording comes from a pianist who has built a good career, particularly in his native Italy, where among other things he has given the first public recital there of all Messiaen’s piano works. He has also been recording them: his version of Catalogue d’Oiseaux has been warmly received and won a prize (review). He has also made a collection of most of the shorter pieces, and now we have Vingt Regards.
Longobardi’s quality is immediately apparent from the opening Regard du Père. The slow pace, the constant repetitions and the very quiet dynamic all present challenges. I was impressed by the subtle way Longobardi shaped the individual statements of the God theme, kept the repetitions alive and very slowly built up to the climax and then came down from it. He showed these qualities also in the other pieces which involve a great deal of repetition, such as III L’échange and VII Regard de la Croix. In II Regard de l’etoile I noticed his perfect and precise chording, which he demonstrates throughout. V Regard du Fils sur le Fils is one of those rhythmic canons which Messiaen was so fond of during this period. There is another in IX Regard du temps and one is one of the blocks of material in XIV Regard des Anges, and Longobardi’s precise realisation of the interlocking of the complicated durations is most impressive.
He can play very forcefully where this is required, notably in VI Par Lui tout a été fait which is a real virtuoso number but also in the thunderous XII La parole toute-puissante and the clangorous XII Noël. At the other end of the scale, he is sensitive and gentle in quiet numbers and passages, IX Regards du temps, the opening section of XI Première communion de la Vierge and XV Le baiser de l’Enfant-Jésus. His birdsong interjections are crisp and precise. His pedalling is skilful, and he knows when to keep the texture dry.
Finally, in the two culminating pieces at the end of each half of the work he really raises the roof. These are X Regard de l’Esprit de joie, where he creates a wild ecstasy, and XX Regard de l’Eglise d’amour, where the chordal theme becomes exultant.
In short, Longobardi is a complete Messiaen pianist.
Vingt Regards normally makes up a two disc set on its own, but here we have as a bonus the Petites Esquisses d’Oiseaux, Messiaen’s last piano work and one of the last works of his altogether. I expect they are here because there wasn’t room for them on Longobardi’s set of Messiaen’s short pieces. They are very short, little more than sketches, but it is nice to have them.
Vingt Regards has had many good recordings over the years. My standard recommendations are Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Steven Osborne, the first more modernistic and the second more romantic, to which I would also add the connoisseur’s choice, the remarkable version by Jean-Rodolphe Kars also, as it happens, on Piano Classics, made before the influence of Messiaen’s music induced him to abandon his pianistic career to become a Roman Catholic priest (review). Ciro Longobardi can join their company: this is a splendid version which will certainly be one of my recordings of the year.
Stephen Barber
Previous review: Philip Harrison (January 2025)
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