Few people, here or elsewhere, have kept the flame alive, but in 1967 the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Seiji Ozawa recorded a large Turangalîla-Symphony (with Yvonne and Jeanne Loriod!). To ignore this stroke of genius and arrive 55 years later with a rounded, faded, impersonal, less scrutinized, rushed and without magic remake is quite ironic. Unlike Rafael Payare’s recent concert, what is missing here is the point of view, interpretive and sonic. A seemingly innocuous example: the last two minutes of love song 2 (track 4). As the theme of the statue (brass), faded, does not impose itself, all the contrast of the end is minimized, a game in which the poetics are dominated by the piano and the Martenot waves. In the sound “strata”, Marc-André Hamelin’s piano could also be sharper, if we refer to the palette of Jean-Yves Thibaudet, even more refined now than in his recording with Chailly. This banal publication has no interest in the face of the Ozawa, Chailly and Wit references.
To watch on video