Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie is no longer a special event. That is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s good to see the work enter the repertoire, finding itself within the capabilities of most full-time professional ensembles. Hannu Lintu’s performance fits the new paradigm: his conducting has an easy lightness, and the playing of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra a confidence that bespeaks music that poses little challenge from a purely technical point of view.
This recording strikingly resembles Juanjo Mena’s recent Hyperion recording from Bergen. I thought that version offered striking clarity in the three Turangalîla movements, but this one is if anything even more rhythmically precise and texturally transparent. This is all the more remarkable considering that the keyboards are very forwardly balanced. Angela Hewitt offers a dazzling account of the piano part, and you really can hear every single note of the Ondes Martenot, even in the most thickly scored passages of the wild Joy of the Blood of the Stars or the Final.
As with most performances of this type, there are moments where you might wish for more weight. The “statue” theme at the start really is not triple forte, and the big climaxes in the “love song” movements, while texturally clear, could pack more of a wallop. But that comes with the territory–this is a wholly committed performance, extremely well played, and brilliantly engineered in SACD surround sound, as long as you don’t mind the up-front soloists.
