Bessette walks your ears inside the moving cogs of Messiaen's mosaic structure, where many pianists merely float them along its surface. From the clangourous timpani of resonating strikes at the opening to her responsive treatment of Messiaen's transforming block-chord sequences, this performance has a rare depth of aural perspective. ...reminding us that Cantéyodjayâ is the link between the interlocking cycles inside Vingt Regards and the more fragmented Catalogue d'oiseaux.

Cantéyodjayâ is one of Messiaen's greatest free-standing keyboard pieces, an extraordinary explosion of rhythmic energy and virtuosity, whose method of arranging ideas like a mosaic opened a new phase in his development. Its power and strength are balanced at the other end of the disc by the biggest of all the solo-piano bird pieces, La Fauvette des Jardins, The Garden Warbler, which is all that Messiaen completed (in 1970) of what might have been another volume of the Catalogue d'Oiseaux. Bessette plays them both with a great deal of understanding…