Admirers of Messiaen’s music will simply have to have this record, for it contains the world premiere recording of a solo piano piece, Morceau de lecture à vue composed in 1934 for the sight-reading examination at the École Normale de Musique. In the nature of things, this adds nothing to our knowledge of the composer and his work, but for completeness’ sake it deserves a place in the composer’s discography.

Quite apart from the unique nature of this piece on disc, the record merits a strong recommendation for the performances of the other, more well-known music here. The result is an excellent issue, dominated as it is by the masterly Quartet for the end of time which still, after seventy years, packs a considerable punch in terms of emotional expression—especially in such a fine performance as it undoubtedly receives in this instance.

The nature of this performance is to make more accessible the composer’s utterly original lay-out: the eight movements undoubtedly are connected and threaded both melodically and emotionally (if not liturgically), but can often appear in live performance relatively unconnected (as though any order would be acceptable); the success of this performance is that the eight movements are given with the implication that they make four groups of two—with each group slightly longer than its predecessor, so that the sense of culmination in the final supplication to Christ’s immortality is as powerful and as overwhelming as it should be. The result is, musically and emotionally, very successful indeed.

The relatively early Fantasie for violin and piano (1933) seems to be more often heard in recital these days than used to be the case, and it remains an impressive work which I have often felt would make an excellent introduction to this composer’s output for those who might tend to fight shy of the essentially pietistic nature of some of his later creations. It receives an equally assured and confident reading here from James Clark and Matthew Schellhorn, a Messiaen authority and pupil of Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen, who plays admirably throughout. Le Merle noir was one of the first pieces by Messiaen to appear on disc in the UK, and its extraordinarily original inspiration retains its freshness and validity in this account from Kenneth Smith. The little piece for piano quintet—just three minutes long—is nothing much to write home about, but in terms of discographical completeness is none the less welcome.

Roger Nichols provides most informative booklet notes, and the recording quality is of a consistently high modern standard. All in all, this is a highly recommendable CD, the more so for including a world premiere recording.