This recording marks the first collaboration between Harmonia Mundi and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and what an auspicious start. For their first major project with a North American orchestra, they have delivered a supremely sensual account of Olivier Messiaen’s epic Turangalîla-Symphonie. Music Director Gustavo Gimeno conducts, with soloists Marc-André Hamelin on piano and Nathalie Forget playing the distinctive ondes Martenot part.

Messiaen’s masterwork was written between 1946 and 1948 for a massive orchestra. A Koussevitzky commission for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, its 1949 premiere was conducted by Leonard Bernstein. With its vast battery of percussion – the booklet lists two timpanists and nine other players – plus four keyboard instruments (the soloists are supplemented by celesta and keyed glockenspiel), Turangalîla is a challenge for conductor, orchestra and, especially on disc, for the sound engineers. Not only does it require razor-sharp discipline, it demands an exceptional ear for internal balance to bring out the work’s full palette of colours.

“To properly prepare for this undertaking, I began studying the music months in advance,” writes Gimeno in a sleeve note. “I...