O. Messiaen - Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus, No. XV - "Le Baiser de l'Enfant-Jésus"

Website: https://www.nilmladin.com/ Instagram:   / nil_mladin   Facebook:   / nil.mladin   XV: Le baiser de l’Enfant-Jésus (The Kiss of the Infant Jesus): At each Communion, the Infant Jesus sleeps with us, close to the gate; then he opens it onto the garden and comes forth in a blaze of light to embrace us … Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) completed his Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus ("Twenty visions of the infant Jesus") – Jesus on September 8th 1944. The work’s twenty pieces are gazes or meditations on the infancy of Jesus Christ and prove challenging to both, performer and listener. An explosive work written for his pupil, Yvonne Loriod (who was to become his wife), Vingt Regards is massive, almost unruly in its overflow of energy and colour, teeming with gorgeous sonorities and intellectually rigorous ideas. Each movement is quite literally a meditation on a theological aspect of his Roman Catholic beliefs, yet the contemplations are meticulously and dramatically paced: they can be serene, fierce, languid, rigidly doctrinal or even humorous. A typical performance lasts about two hours. “The Kiss of the Child Jesus” is the best-known of Vingt Regards, and most often played as a substantial solo piece. It’s stunningly beautiful and lyrical, treating the Theme of God as a slow-motion berceuse, adding birds, dances, tone clusters, and all the passion of a high romantic Ballade. After the opening section the music becomes playful in ‘le jardin’; slowly the arms of the child Jesus extend in love, before the climactic kiss. The highly-charged passion of this music reflects on Messiaen’s involvement with the Tristan myth throughout the 40’s (present in his choral work Trois Petits Liturgies and Turangalîla Symphony), the bringing-together of spirituality and sensuality: of Roman Catholic iconography and Eastern eroticism. The movement ends with distant cuckoo calls, and a cadence straight out of a jazzy love song. Recorded at Royal Academy of Music (London 2020) #Messiaen #Piano #Music #nilmladin #Bells #Birds