Olivier Messiaen - Turangalîla-Symphonie; L'ascension (Antoni Wit)

Information

Composer: Olivier Messiaen

CD1:

1. Turangalîla-Symphonie: I. Introduction
2. Turangalîla-Symphonie: II. Chant d'amour 1
3. Turangalîla-Symphonie: III. Turangalîla 1
4. Turangalîla-Symphonie: IV. Chant d'amour 2
5. Turangalîla-Symphonie: V. Joie du sang des étoiles
6. Turangalîla-Symphonie: VI. Jardin du sommeil
7. Turangalîla-Symphonie: VII. Turangalîla 2

CD2:

1. Turangalîla-Symphonie: VIII. Développement de l'Amour
2. Turangalîla-Symphonie: IX. Turangalîla 3
3. Turangalîla-Symphonie: X. Final
4. L'ascension: I. Majesté du Christ demandant sa gloire à son Père
5. L'ascension: II. Alléluias sereins d'une âme qui désire le ciel
6. L'ascension: III. Alléluia sur la trompette, Alléluia sur la cymbale
7. L'ascension: IV. Prière du Christ montant vers son Père

François Weigel, piano
Thomas Bloch, ondes martenot

Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra
Antoni Wit, conductor

Date: 2000
Label: Naxos
https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.554478-79

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Review

A Turangalila with all the expressive power the score needs, and its equally well-played coupling provides an opportunity to enjoy less frequently heard Messiaen

No other 20th-century composition – nothing by Strauss or Scriabin, nothing by Hollywood’s finest – outdoes the sublime earthiness of the Turangalila Symphony. It is so unselfconsciously over-the-top as to be in an expressive category of its own: even The Rite of Spring seems austere beside it. The trick in performance is for 100 or so musicians to sustain the illusion of transcendent spontaneity for 80 minutes, and with more than 70 CDs under their belt for Naxos alone, you might expect a touch of the perfunctory from the Polish National RSO.

Not a bit of it. With the indefatigable Antoni Wit in charge, the only places where this performance threatens to become routine are in the sixth movement, when more melting woodwind playing can be imagined. I for one am willing to sacrifice the last degree of tonal and textural refinement for the strong contrasts and surging intensity offered here, and the sound is typically bold and forwardly balanced. Despite the generalised brightness which seems to be a Naxos trademark these days (so that the various strands of the texture are not ideally defined in very loud passages, and the solo piano grows clangorous here and there), the spirit of the music survives and prospers. The soloists (both new to the catalogue) are excellent, and if this particular ondes martenot is less sweetly vibrant than you have come to expect, so much the better: it still supplies the music with its special ecstatic radiance at crucial moments.

I wouldn’t claim that Wit’s Turangalila displaces Andre Previn’s long-established and greatly admired version – its only rival in lower price categories. Nevertheless, Wit’s coupling – an imposing account of Messiaen’s early yet already characteristic L’ascension – is even more welcome than Previn’s pair of Poulenc concertos, and devotees of Naxos’s ongoing forays into 20th-century masterworks certainly shouldn’t hesitate.

-- Arnold Whittall, Gramophone

More reviews:
ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 10 / SOUND QUALITY: 10
http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/n/nxs54478a.php
https://www.naxos.com/reviews/reviewslist.asp?catalogueid=8.554478-79&languageid=EN

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Olivier Messiaen (December 10, 1908 – April 27, 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically and melodically he employs a system he called modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from the systems of material generated by his early compositions and improvisations. He wrote music for chamber ensembles and orchestra, vocal music, as well as for solo organ and piano, and also experimented with the use of novel electronic instruments developed in Europe during his lifetime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_Messiaen

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Antoni Wit (born February 7, 1944 in Kraków) is a Polish conductor. He studied with Henryk Czyż, Krzysztof Penderecki and Nadia Boulanger. He has recorded over 90 albums, most of them for the Naxos label, and many of them with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice, of which he managed and was artistic director from 1983 to 2000. Since year 2002 he has been music director of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra. Wit specializes in the works of Polish composers such as Henryk Gorecki, Witold Lutosławski, Karol Szymanowski and Krzysztof Penderecki.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_Wit

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