Grade: A
Pierre Boulez once called Messiaen’s giant Turangalila-Symphonie ‘brothel music’. That was mean-spirited but you knew what he meant: a typical performance comes in at just under 80 minutes, much of it consisting of the B-movie sound of an ondes Martenot wailing over lush harmonies. There’s a constant zig-zag of polyrhythms, plus great towers of brass that represent ‘the heavy, terrifying brutality of old Mexican monuments’ – but, yes, it can hang around like cheap scent.
But not in this recording by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra under its music director Gustavo Gimeno, who lingers only where he has to. The effect is not hurried but bouncy and clean-limbed, allowing us to hear the intricacy of the rythmic argument. Understanding it is another matter: Messiaen devised mathematical theories of pitch that inspired his pupil Stockhausen, and in this (relatively) light-texured performance the connection doesn’t seem so implausible.
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