Olivier Messiaen - Éclairs Sur L’Au-Delà... (2019)

A spellbinding rendering of Messiaen's final work, recorded last September in the Barbican, London.  Sir Simon Rattle starts by talking about how moving he found the work on first encounter, before leading the 128-strong LSO through the 11 movements of Messiaen's glimpse of eternity ("flashes over the beyond" is one translation of the title).

It's powerful, hallucinatory stuff, especially when the massed ranks of percussion come to the fore in the sixth section and the eighth, and just wonderously beautiful in the sections where Messiaen's trademark birdsong take the lead.  Éclairs definitely comes across as the work of a composer aware of his imminent mortality (he wouldn't live to see the premiere), but facing it down with the faith of someone who saw death as the raising of "the great curtain" that he visualised in this music.

link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Quatre Études De Rythme
Des Canyons Aux Étoiles
Turangalîla Symphony / Quatour Pour La Fin Du Temps (EMI recordings cond. by Rattle)
Turangalîla Symphony / L'ascension (Naxos recording cond. by Wit)
Et Exspecto Ressurrectionem (Philips recording cond. by Haitink)
Et Exspecto Resurrectionem (Erato recording cond. by Boulez), etc