Festival du Comminges, 29/07/2022

Messiaen : Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus

Bertrand Chamayou, piano

In the wake of the June release of Bertrand Chamayou's new recording of Messiaen's Vingt regards..., he has been diligently doing the rounds promoting it through live performances of the work, which is no small task, since the piece is a monumental suite lasting just over two hours, of ferocious difficulty.  One of these outings happily turned up in my general vicinity, so it was, as they say, a no-brainer.  Performances of the Vingt regards are infrequent, I was not likely to get a better chance any time soon.

As the title suggests, these pieces are contemplations of the new-born Jesus, both in the real sense (such as from his mother, from the shepherds and Magi) and in the abstract or symbolic (such as from the Holy Trinity, or from the Star of Bethlehem).  Messiaen's faith ran deep and true, and his music is a very visceral response to it.  While there can be serenity, more often there is a passion that is little short of violent, and there's certainly nothing vague or insubstantial to it.  Chamayou's commentary on the work suggests he's been working his way up to this consummation, this in-depth exploration of it for the last 30 years.

To say that he made it look easy is doing both Chamayou, and Messiaen, a disservice, but the technicalities of the piece were always at the service of the emotion behind the music, and that he could bring tenderness out of some of the most telluric passages speaks volumes about Chamayou's mastery.  I will be honest; two hours of frequently thunderously percussive piano music, in a reverberant, all-stone acoustic, turned out to be headache-inducing for me, but it was worth it to experience the exaltation and the lyricism Chamayou conveyed so convincingly.

[Next : 23rd September]

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