Messiaen

La Nativité du Seigneur

Richard Gowers (organ)

King’s College Cambridge KGS 0025 67:40 mins

La Nativité du Seigneur is no stranger to King’s College Chapel. As Richard Gowers observes in his engaging performer’s notes, ‘Dieu parmi nous’, the ecstatically rip-roaring final movement of Messiaen’s Christmas cycle, has regularly featured as a voluntary after the annual Nine Lessons and Carols. Moreover, one of the first recordings of La Nativité was made by one of Gowers’s predecessors as organ scholar, Simon Preston.

Captured in 2017, while Gowers was still an undergraduate, this recording is an impressive achievement with much fine playing. The organ at King’s is not, of course, a French Cavaillé-coll instrument, but it has a rich palette

of colour, and a sense of power when needed. The low reeds growl with wonderful menace in ‘Jésus accepte la souffrance’ before being overtaken by the movement’s resplendant conclusion. That Gowers is often unhurried is certainly not a problem in Messiaen’s music, but the individual notes should have a sense of line in ‘Desseins éternels’, and the wise men’s trudge is a little too pedestrian in ‘Les mages’. Nonetheless, the opening flourishes of ‘Le Verbe’ fly joyfully into the rafters and ‘Dieu parmi nous’ is suitably jubilant. Christopher Dingle

PERFORMANCE ★★★

RECORDING ★★★★