Messiaen: Vingt Regards....

[Mandryka]

I acquired this work as part of EMI's anniversary collection which is (still) going for a song via the Rainforest People.

I've just finished listening to it...and, have to say, I think it's unlikely I'll be listening again for a very long time. I'm afraid it struck me as a jangle of arbitrary notes.

Now, I'd never have considered myself an anti-modernist: I bought the set because I like the Quartet Fin de Temps and the Turangalila Symphony.....the other bits and bobs I've listend to all have their appeal, but Ving Regards...no.

Naturally, I'm loathe to dismiss a major work by a composer I generally like as rubbish, but I wonder if this one will ever be for me? Or is it something that yields its secrets only after several listenings?

[amateur51]

I acquired this work as part of EMI's anniversary collection which is (still) going for a song via the Rainforest People.

I've just finished listening to it...and, have to say, I think it's unlikely I'll be listening again for a very long time. I'm afraid it struck me as a jangle of arbitrary notes.

Now, I'd never have considered myself an anti-modernist: I bought the set because I like the Quartet Fin de Temps and the Turangalila Symphony.....the other bits and bobs I've listend to all have their appeal, but Ving Regards...no.

Naturally, I'm loathe to dismiss a major work by a composer I generally like as rubbish, but I wonder if this one will ever be for me? Or is it something that yields its secrets only after several listenings?

I 'came to' Vingt Régards at a public recital by Peter Donohoe in a freezing Wigmore Hall in 1986. He preceded it with a performance of Beethoven's Appassionata sonata!

His performance was astonishing and I fell under its spell & tootled up up to a second-hand shop in Camden shortly after where I picked up a second-hand copy of the Peter Serkin recording on LP which cemented my love of the piece. Is your version by Michel Béroff?

It certainly repays repeated listening. And try to get to a 'live' performance too

[Mandryka]

I 'came to' Vingt Régards at a public recital by Peter Donohoe in a freezing Wigmore Hall in 1986. He preceded it with a performance of Beethoven's Appassionata sonata!

His performance was astonishing and I fell under its spell & tootled up up to a second-hand shop in Camden shortly after where I picked up a second-hand copy of the Peter Serkin recording on LP which cemented my love of the piece. Is your version by Michel Béroff?

It certainly repays repeated listening. And try to get to a 'live' performance too

Thanks, amateur51. I have feeling this may be the kind of work you appreciate best when you 'stubmle' upon it, as you did: that sounds like concert for people with healthy appetites!

Yes, the version I have is Michel Beroff's 1969 Salle Wagram recording, which was a pioneering set in its day. I have an old copy of Records And Recording (from 1969) in which it is reviewed.

[Bryn]

Thinking back several decades, I don't recall taking to Vingt Regards on first hearing. However, I tried again after a few years and could not for the life of me grasp how I had failed to warm to it first time. The Beroff recording you mention would not be my first choice, but it is still a fine recording. However, even on first listening I certainly did not perceive it as "a jangle of arbitrary notes". It's just that it did not grab me the way La Nativité and Turangalîla had.

[Mandryka]

Thinking back several decades, I don't recall taking to Vingt Regards on first hearing. However, I tried again after a few years and could not for the life of me grasp how I had failed to warm to it first time. The Beroff recording you mention would not be my first choice, but it is still a fine recording. However, even on first listening I certainly did not perceive it as "a jangle of arbitrary notes". It's just that it did not grab me the way La Nativité and Turangalîla had.

Apparently, Madame Messiaen herself thought that Beroff recorded the piece too early in his career 'before he had met Messiaen' and she felt that his performance suffered as a result.

Edited to add: the Serkin performance does seem to be very highly regarded.

[Bryn]

Overall, my favourite recording of Vngt Regards is, perhaps predictably, the Steven Osborne on Hyperion, though less predictably I also have a lot of time for the DVD of Roger Muraro, recorded in the Eglise de la Grave, which offers a very different approach to the music. The accompanying DVD of documentary material is also of interest. It includes a performance with commentary of Messiaen's "Opus 1", not included in the official canon, La Dame de Shalott, though Yvonne Loriod did record it (though it has never appeared on CD as far as I Know). Back in the early 1980s Radio 3 included the Loriod recording of La Dame de Shalott (from LP) in a Messiaen survey. I have a rather poor cassette of that somewhere.

[ahinton]

If Vingt Regards sur L'Enfant-Jésus is indeed "a jangle of arbitrary notes", then so is Op.109, Chopin's F minor Ballade, Liszt's Sonata, &c. It may not be everyone's cup of nectar, but it is a potent and powerful expression of what the composer felt and makes eminently good sense as piano music qua piano music; that surely says quite a lot for it! Béroff may indeed have recorded it somewhat prematurely; I only wish that Liszt could have stuck around to make its first recording (although he's have needed even more gerontian impetus than Elliott Carter to do so) - I suspect that he might well have relished the prospect!

[Chris Newman]

I always felt that Madame Messiaen gets nearer the heart of the work than anyone and to hear her live made the work easier to accept. I also like Stephen Osborne and Pierre-Laurent Aimard. I do not know if Peter Hill's Unicorn recording is still available: it was much praised. We will not go into Joyce Hatto.

If live performances prove thin on the ground the Twenty Comtemplations work well as single entities, in much the same way as one need not dive into all of Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues in one go.

[ahinton]

I always felt that Madame Messiaen gets nearer the heart of the work than anyone and to hear her live made the work easier to accept.

I don't think that she was necessarily quite the last word on the work but her accounts were certainly immensely persuasive.

We will not go into Joyce Hatto.

Er - no. Quite.

If live performances prove thin on the ground the Twenty Comtemplations work well as single entities, in much the same way as one need not dive into all of Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues in one go.

Well, OK, yet the work does function very successfully as a cycle, given the particular order in which the pieces are placed - indeed far more so than either of the two books of the "48" (unsurprisingly, since the latter were far less intentionally designed to be considered, let alone presented, as a cycle as was VR).

[Bryn]

Peter Hill's recording is available from a number of sources, I think. It is included in the Brilliant Classics box of the piano works (Hill), organ works (Tanke) and songs (Kappelle and Austbo), but I think Regis or an associated label may do the individual piano works.

[Bryn]

I have the Paul Kim recording from which the 'Hatto' issue was apparently adapted. It is not to be dismissed so easily:

Paul Kim's Vingt Regards.

[johnb]

If live performances prove thin on the ground the Twenty Comtemplations work well as single entities, in much the same way as one need not dive into all of Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues in one go.

My instant reaction, on reading that, was to shout at the top of my voice: NO, NO, NO.

Sure you can listen to individual movements, just as you can pick a movement from a piano sonata or a symphony, but they will not make sense at all unless they are heard in context. Vingt Regards is most definitely not like Bach's 48 - the work as a whole has a carefully worked out structure and the movements interrelate. Also,hearing all the 'regards' has a cumulative and very powerful effect. (Mind you I rarely listen to the full 2 hrs at once except in recitals.) If you are going to listen in chunks - it would be best to listen to chunks that relate to the structure within the work, I think either 4 or 5 Regards in a chunk would be good but I can't remember and it's late now, so I will have to check tomorrow.

I heard Loriod perform it live some 20 or 30 years ago but it was Steven Osborne's performance that really grabbed me. (Perhaps I heard Loriod at too early a stage of my gradually increasing love of Messiaen's music.)

By the way, there is a chapter on Vingt Regards in Peter Hill's Messiaen Companion. I heartilly recommend it for anyone in anyway interested in the piece.

[Pianorak]

I came across it quite unawares when Aleksandar Madzar played no. 15 Le baiser de l’Enfant-Jésus as an encore. Until then I had shown no interest in Messiaen but this piece showed me what I had been missing. Since then I have been living quite happily with the Peter Hill and Yvonne Loriod recordings. Maybe time to add the Steven Osborne?

[Quarky]

The Messiaen Edition Box Set has Vingt Regards played by Yvonne Loriod.

I have also heard Llyr Williams play this at the Wigmore Hall quite recently. An illumunating performance, but I did wonder why there seemed to be a larger number of females in the audience than usual!

My only thought in regard to "getting into " this work, is that it is, along with many other of Messiaen's works , deeply religious. Approach it therefore as you might a Bach Cantata?

[ostuni]

I'd urge Mandryka (and anyone else who hasn't seen it yet) to get the Muraro DVD which Bryn mentioned: only £9.99 at Amazon. As the 2nd review on Amazon says, you can see quite a few pieces on Youtube for a taster: try Regard XI (Première Communion de la Vierge) for some heart-melting beauty. The bonus dvd has a really useful guide to the cycle and its 4 main thematic blocks, as well as a useful intro to Regard VI, the barnstorming fugue Par Lui tout a été fait.

Like many, I got to know this piece (on LPs) in Beroff's version (the cheapest available to me as a student in the early 70s): Osborne's is the best-sounding CD version. I've only heard it live once: Muraro in Avignon, a few years ago.