Messiaen: The Organ Works - Jennifer Bate 6CD Box Set

Editorial Reviews
Album Description
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992): The Organ Works

Jennifer Bate, organist

6 CD box set, 44 page booklet including updated notes. The compilation set comprises of four previously released REGIS recordings (RRC1086, RRC1087, RR2051, RRC2052) all available at Premiere Music Distributors.

Including (amongst many): La Nativité du Seigneur, Livre d'Orgue, Livre du Saint Sacrement, Les Neuf Méditations

C'est vraiment parfait!" said Messiaen after hearing Jennifer Bate's recording of La Nativité du Seigneur, one of his most extended, most moving and most beautiful works. The recording of the Beauvais Cathedral organ is of demonstratation quality."

Messiaen: The Organ Works - Jennifer Bate 6CD Box Set, Music, Olivier Messiaen

Average customer rating:

Outstanding recordings personally endorsed by Messiaen himself!!!

Messiaen: The Organ Works - Jennifer Bate 6CD Box Set (including "La Nativite du Seigneur", "L'Ascension", "Livre d'Orgue", "Livre du Saint Sacrement", and "Les Neuf Meditations"

Manufacturer: Regis Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Classical | Indie Music | Stores | Music
General | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B0000V86LE
Release Date: 2003-10-13

Album Description

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992): The Organ Works

Jennifer Bate, organist

Including (amongst many): La Nativité du Seigneur, Livre d'Orgue, Livre du Saint Sacrement, Les Neuf Méditations

Customer Reviews:

Outstanding recordings personally endorsed by Messiaen himself!!!.......2007-03-06

The above title particularly applies to Miss Bate's recording of "La Nativité du Seigneur" (of which the composer wrote "it's truly perfect!"); and it's easy to see why! Messiaen insisted on SLOW tempi in his works for the most part (maybe too slow for some!) and Miss Bate honours his desires most satisfyingly while not remaining without her cool, devoted and yet versatile personality coupled with a fully-sovereign technique. Not for nothing that Messiaen, a personal friend of hers, then had her give the world-première recording of the "Livre du Saint Sacrement", recorded on his "own" instrument at La Trinité (basically a Cavaillé-Coll from 1868, if I remember correctly, albeit subsequently enlarged {twice, in 1933 and 1965, by Beuchet-Debierre}).

This instrument (featured for the Saint-Sacrement recording included in what's virtually his entire organ output on this 6-CD collection) is by no means lacklustre (contrary to what somebody else wrote) - it's very much what the composer had in mind when writing his music: grand-sounding, fiery reeds with the characteristic French 'spit' coupled with warm, lush yet clear foundations with which the new mixtures and mutations blend beautifully, getting to sparkle without nevertheless overwhelming the basic foundation + reed sound that's one of the hallmarks of Cavaillé-Coll's output. [The newest incarnation of this organbuilder's sister-instrument in Notre-Dame de Paris has much the same flavour after the earlier excesses of the Cochereau era were tamed in the early 1990s.]

On the other hand, what Miss Bate uses for the other pieces - the gallery-organ by Danion-Gonzalez in La Cathédrale de Saint-Pierre à Beauvais - while sounding brighter, still is by no means out of character for this music (and here she keeps to the specified registrations, in contrast to her Franck recordings on the same organ: some of the liberties she there takes {in the Franck} just strike me as UNJUSTIFIABLE, interesting as they AT TIMES seem in themselves {other times it feels as if she's bored and trying to 'spice up the music' unnecessarily}). Certainly the same care for detail, sound registration and overall expressiveness in the playing comes forth in what's an even-more reverberant acoustic there (and no surprise with this incomplete {without a nave!} edifice's interior height of 48 metres, perhaps the tallest in the world!). All this coupled with a very spacious recording that requires plenty of volume to allow the full sonorities to come through (with both locations) - WOW!!!!

In one phrase: most strongly recommended! [This is not to malign or belittle Olivier Latry's work at the Paris Cathedral; however, this set of recordings is NO LESS outstanding - and priced particularly competitively to boot! GET IT!!!!

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