Review: Marino Formenti: Messiaen’s Twenty Glances at the Infant Jesus

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  Ravinia has translated the title of Olivier Messiaen’s monumental piano cycle “Vingt regards sur l’enfant-Jésus” as “Twenty Glances at the Infant Jesus,” but “Twenty Contemplations” would be a more literal translation of Messaien’s intensions, which were to offer musical meditations on various aspects of the infinity of the Christ child. Messiaen was a Roman Catholic mystic who despite being one of the most innovative composers of the twentieth century, a master teacher who counted Stockhausen and Boulez as his students, among others, an ornithologist who studied and imitated the musical properties of birds, he also played the organ for Mass at Trinity in Paris virtually every Sunday from 1931 until the last year of his life before his death in 1992. Messaien left an aural soundtrack for his unusual faith, literal icons of sonority that are rapturous doorways to the sacred. But you don’t have to be religious to appreciate them as the great art as they are, and these pieces fail to leave even a die-hard atheist such as his former student Boulez unmoved. “Vingt regards” was written in 1944 for his student and French pianist Yvonne Loriod, who would become Mrs. Messaien in 1961, but back then at least, it took a long while for Messiaen to feel that she was bringing the proper feeling to the work, despite having all of its complex notes and rhythms down pat. That remains a significant challenge to this day, but by all accounts, Italian pianist Marino Formenti is more than up to the daunting task. (Dennis Polkow) Ravinia Festival’s Martin Theatre, Lake-Cook & Green Bay, Highland Park; (847)266-5100. $10-$40.