Boulanger • Fauré • Messiaen

Boulanger: Prelude in D flat; Fauré: Preludes, Op. 103; Messiaen: Preludes for Piano Alexandra Dariescu (piano) Champs Hill Records CHRCD 149 64:18 mins

With this beautifully recorded disc, Alexandra Dariescu reaches the end of her ‘Preludes’ trilogy, which has so far taken in music by Chopin, Dutilleux, Shostakovich and Szymanowski. Debussy might have been the obvious choice for this final disc, but instead we turn to elusive Fauré and evocative Messiaen, two French composers quite different in spirit and sentiment who nonetheless sit happily side by side here.

First, though, a brief moment is given to Lili Boulanger, and her D flat major Prelude of 1911, dated and signed in the manuscript even though it’s not entirely clear that it’s a finished piece. Unlike her other music, it’s a bit of a stylistic patchwork that Dariescu nonetheless turns into finery.

The Romanian pianist is also more than up to all the technical challenges of Fauré’s nine Préludes, Op. 103: she scurries purposefully and swiftly as an ant in No. 2 in C sharp minor, and her cantabile line in No. 1 in D flat couldn’t sing any more sweetly. She gets into the enigmatic mood of the music, too, imbuing the fragments of melody in No. 3 in G minor with importance. Would a touch more turbulence go amiss? Perhaps not, although Aaron Copland’s view was that Fauré’s Préludes offered ‘intensity on a background of calm’ – and that’s an apt description here.

The same virtues apply in the Messiaen, from 1929, with its heightened language exploring songs of ecstasy, bells of anguish and tears of farewell. It’s not an unsettled quality that’s missing here, but the fervour and ecstasy of his music, captured by other interpreters. Rebecca Franks

PERFORMANCE ★★★

RECORDING ★★★★★