Poemes pour Mi / Les offrandes oubliees / Un sourire

"I hope the Lyon orchestra are about to fill the gaps in Naxos's Messiaen catalogue, for this new release is as good as any I have yet encountered. It starts with the advantage of Anne Schwanewilms, one of the most beautiful soprano voices of her generation, her tonal quality ideal for music that has its roots in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. Written as poems for his wife, her pen name being Mi, they are not songs of love, but of mystery, spirituality, and at times of darkness, the violence of the fourth song, Epouvante, being a traumatised vision of the pain of finding memories lost. Originally scored for voice and piano, the orchestral version took some years to find favour, but in hindsight it was one of the composer's finest scores. Les offrandes oubilées, was his earliest published orchestral work and established his intent to spend much of his life composing sacred music. In three highly contrasting sections, a depiction of man's descent into sin shaping the central part. It is the disc's final track, Un sourire, that is the most strange creation. Commissioned as to be composed 'in the spirit of Mozart', Messiaen produced a score that was intended as a comment on Mozart's desire to make people smile. Whether Messiaen achieved his objective will be in the mind of the listener. As with the accompaniment to the song cycle, the orchestral playing and the conducting of Jun Märkl cannot be faulted, while Tim Handley's engineering is admirable. My disc of the month."
(David's Review Corner Oct 2009)