Taylor Wowed the Audience with Messiaen's Spiritual Ordeal

On Tuesday, July 9, pianist Christopher Taylor mesmerized the audience in Music Academy of the West's Hahn Hall. He played Olivier Messiaen's Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jesus, a demanding two plus hours of solo piano. Messiaen composed the work during 1943 and 1944 in occupied Paris, and it confronts the audience with a series of spiritual states that Taylor brought alive in a true artistic experience.

While almost every view uses some of a small collection of leitmotifs, they are quite insular and discrete in the spiritual experiences they present. The views move from atonal, rhythmic order to rapturous ugliness. The tempo is entirely foreign to the stately church music familiar to me. Instead, Messiaen really captures the fervent madness of religious exaltation, and Taylor made the most of them.

The small audience in this beautiful hall was with the performer the entire evening, and the four curtain calls were genuinely demanded. The newly renovated Hahn Hall is now my favorite venue in Santa Barbara. It is well designed and comfortable, and the architectural elements have a restrained grace that is ideal for the recitals and chamber music that will be performed here. The Met's HD broadcasts will also air here next season, and I look forward to going to this wonderful space as well as avoiding the trek down to Ventura.