It was Yvonne Loriod. There's something about the way she voices the chords that for me, in comparison with any other pianist, how to put this, deepens the colours. Those Austbø recordings are pretty good too, and rhythmically more like what's in the score.

I find Rattle's Eclairs much more involving than Chung's, and I am no fan of Rattle; I like Chung's Turangalîla a lot, Nagano's perhaps even more (the ondes Martenot with Chung is a bit too much in the background for my taste) and maybe also Ozawa's best of all, though that may be mainly because it was the first one I ever heard and the only one for a long time.

Nagano's Turangalila for me:  although when I last listened to it the other day - on the Pod on the train going to work - I did wonder at times whether it really should sound quite so gorgeous.  By the time I got to East Croydon I had decided that it probably should.

It is certainly as opulent as can be. But maybe it has that "too-easy" quality that the Berlin Phil quite often has. On the other hand Ozawa's Toronto Symphony play it as if their lives depended on it. I am wondering though in what direct sense Turangalîla is a "religious" work except in so far as it was written by a religious composer.

I'd forgotten that one - have heard it but never owned it. I remember it being truly fantastic, unlike any other.

To tidy up the Messiaen subject: Des Canyons aux étoiles - Constant for me, no question. (TF: I mean that wholeheartedly.)

Anyone else know the recording of the premiere of Oiseaux exotiques? I've mentioned that here a couple of times. Domaine musical conducted not by Boulez but by Rudolf Albert, available on Accord in a box of magnificent DM archival recordings. Several minutes shorter than any other - as with many of his pieces he changed metronome markings over the years but as with Turangalîla I admit to a considerable affection for the original.

Yes, but... I do think the piece benefits from the wider dynamic range and greater transparency of Chung's recording, especially in the more percussion-intensive passages. One of the things I take most joy from in music is hearing and appreciating all the micro-intricacies of complex sound-structures (hmm, that sounds rather arch-modernistic does it not?  ) and I hear more of that in the Chung, although I will also readily admit that Constant and his performers express the radiant vision of the piece with what sounds like great conviction.

I shall get to Harawi in due course. First there's Eclairs and Et exspecto. I am an admirer of Maestro Wit, though I haven't heard his Messiaen. I think it was Bryn who placed his recording of Eclairs at the top of the pile. All I can say is I found Chung's recording a bit soft-focus and the colours too blended in comparison to Rattle, in whose recording I can just about convince myself that I hear all of the unison instruments (ie- the bassoons as well as the horns and trombones) in the sixth movement.

Jonathan Dove's Pinocchio from the broadcast a few weeks back, up until now dormant on a hard drive. It seems to inhabit the centre of a musical triangle bounded by Janáček (particularly Vixen), John Adams and the Stephen Sondheim of Sweeney Todd. Clever libretto, short rhyming lines. Just dipped in to check it, and am taken enough to stay with it.

martle, having heard more (the whole of the first act), I have to agree - it's an inherited rather than an individual voice. I increasingly found myself playing 'source the derivation'. On the other hand the audience for whom it was presumably devised would probably not be anything like as aware of its wellsprings, so they'd have more time to enjoy the positive aspects - the music's approachable without being over simplistic, the scoring's excellent, and he has a sure hand for making musical capital out of a dramatic situation.