Turangalîla: Infinite Love review – RPO and 1927 Studios bring Messiaen to joyous and vibrant life

Royal Festival Hall, London Part of the Southbank’s Multitudes festival, this pairing of silent movie and Messiaen was a feast for the eyes and ears What happens when you pair one of the 20th century’s most hectic and emotionally overwhelming scores with a hyperactive animated movie? The result might easily have been an unholy mess, but what emerged from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s inspired collaboration with the multi-award-winning 1927 Studios was a triumph. Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla-symphonie is steeped in the legend of Tristan and Isolde, its 80 luxuriant minutes culminating in a joyous outpouring of sensual and spiritual love. The 100 or so musicians never balked at the work’s complexities as Vasily Petrenko guided them through the knottiest musical thickets in an unusually clear-eyed account of this most challenging of scores. Elastic tempi generated vast orgasmic peaks, and yet not one of the composer’s vivid colours was ever smudged. Steven Osborne, an old hand at the fiendish solo piano part, was particularly impressive in the glittering cadenzas with Cécile Lartigau’s eerie glissandos on the ondes Martenot cutting cleanly through the orchestral