Melisande Chauveau is a pianist of commanding virtuosity and imposing gesture. When called upon to execute ''a vehement dance, the intoxicating sound of horns'' (Messiaen's annotation) in No. 10 of this cycle, ''The Gaze of the Spirit of Joy'', she responds with boldly sketched outlines and rich colours, and she finds grandeur as well as flamboyance amid the ''galaxies, photons, contrary spirals, inverted thunderbolts'' of ''By Him were all things made'' (No. 6, the cycle's 'scherzo'). In short, where the Lisztian virtues of brilliance, dexterity and sonorous magnificence are required, which is to say rather often—Messiaen wrote the Regards as a mystical declaration of faith, but also as a tribute to the vivid pianism of Yvonne Loriod—Chauveau can provide them excitingly.
However, when all is said and done, the Regards are a cycle of meditations as well, and here I find these performances a bit less satisfying. Chauveau seldom plays really quietly, for a start. In part this is due to a very close recording which ensures that when she really does try to play with a mere breath of tone (in No. 17, say, ''The Gaze of Silence'') we are uncomfortably aware of how much noise the pedals and dampers of her piano are making. She can't quite trust very slow speeds, either, nor long, patient pauses. She is happier with the grandly sonorous bells of ''Christmas'' (No. 13) than with the rapt contemplation that ensues. ''The Kiss of the Child Jesus'' (No. 15) lacks suspense, the ability to wait until the next chord positively aches to arrive.
It has to be said, however, that there is no sense in all this of a virtuoso in a china-shop who would obviously much rather be somewhere else, playing perhaps the Third Rachmaninov Concerto. Chauveau's love for the music is everywhere apparent, not least at those moments where she quietly sings along with her own playing. And in almost all these pieces there are bright tangles of sound, florid arabesques, grand chorales and stamping dances in which her technique and the music are in accord. Stillness, though, and the paradoxical ability to evoke silence, are also prerequisites. Peter Hill's remarkable reading excels at just these qualities, and its recording is more spacious.'