If you like Messiaen, you have a head start on the music here. It's not that either Walter Boudreau's or Luc Marcel's music is derivative, but both composers build upon the foundations that the great Messiaen laid. It's a bit like Richard Strauss's music which, though it doesn't sound very much like Wagner, owes a huge debt that composer's advances in orchestration, harmony and much else.

If you dislike Messiaen, you won't like this stuff any better. It's the sort of music that you can't approach by studying the theory behind it. It doesn't readily respond to traditional analysis. You might be able to study the score and make numerous discoveries about how the work is put together, but it would avail you little. These are works that must be approached with an open and tranquil mind. Without such a mind, you may well listen to the music, but you will probably not hear it.

Having said that, I should add that both of the works on this CD are in some measure descriptive and the titles of the movements are useful in guiding the listener through these scores. Cité des anges is a suite of fourteen short pieces inspired by various features of the Montreal landscape. Les Planètes is a set of thirteen meditations on -- ah, but you've guessed.

Pianist Louis-Philippe Pelletier, best known for his magisterial Debussy recordings and performances, is scarcely less convincing with this repertoire.

If you are interested in piano music that isn't quite cutting-edge, but is far from easy listening, you are likely to get a lot of satisfaction from this CD.