Hands-On The Bovet Récital 22 Grand Récital

As we mentioned in our introduction to the watch, the Grand Récital is built around a tellurium – this is a type of astronomical complication which shows the relative positions of the Earth, Moon, and Sun. The Earth, in the Grand Récital, is represented by a hand-lacquered hemisphere, showing the Earth as seen from a vantage point above the North Pole. The hemisphere rotates once every 24 hours, and around it, a sphere representing the Moon orbits once every synodic month (29.53 days). The Sun is represented by the cage of the flying tourbillon. The hour is read off the Arabic numerals at the periphery of the globe, and there's a retrograde minute display to the left, and a power reserve indication to the right. You can get an approximate idea of the current phase of the Moon from its position with respect to the Earth and Sun, and to help you along, the various phases of the Moon are also printed on a sort of rehaut around the Earth.

So much of the interest and drama in the Grand Récital is on the dial side that one almost feels sorry for the back – however, there is a lot of information presented there as well. There's a perpetual calendar display that's rather original in how it's executed – in addition to the day, month, and Leap Year, there's a date indication which uses a retrograde disk (which I can't recall having seen anywhere else before). And there's an indication for the hour of the day as well. The retrograde disk has date numerals on both sides, and you can read the date through a porthole on the dial side of the watch, which is nestled in between the retrograde seconds sector and the tourbillon cage.

There is (sorry, movement side) no doubt, however, that the dial side of the Grand Récital is where the action is. The lacquer painting on the Earth depicts the Earth's surface in meticulous detail. Major mountain ranges, areas of forest and desert, shallow vs. deep bodies of water, and even patterns of swirling clouds, are all picked out in a riot of colors.

The sense of depth you get from the lacquer work is partly due to the great skill with which color transitions are handled, but it's also thanks to the fact that the lacquer has been applied in layers – including an upper nearly translucent coat, which is used to create the illusion of clouds in motion around the major land masses.

Normally, a one minute flying tourbillon is the visual centerpiece of any watch in which it happens to appear, but it's pretty hard to compete with the hypnotic pull exerted by the slowly rotating hemisphere that represents the Earth. Still, the cage, with its six rays and diamond end-stone, is worth paying attention to as an individual element, separate from its role as a team player in the tellurium.

The pigments used to depict the continents, as well as the sunlit half of the Moon, contain Super-LumiNova, and the result is one of the most enthralling nighttime displays I've ever seen in a wristwatch. I've always felt that in general, the decorative possibilities of luminous materials are a little underused in modern watchmaking (heck, they're underused in vintage watchmaking too, although in pre-Luminova days, that probably would have meant playing around with radioactive materials, so maybe it's just as well). It's a characteristic of Super-LumiNova to glow fairly brightly for the first hour or so, and then gradually dim over the next few hours, but if the lume's charged and your eyes are dark-adapted, you're in for quite a treat.

The globe isn't the only element treated with lume; the numerals, and the side of the Moon that faces the Sun have lume applied as well, and there's even lume in words "Grand Recital," although there's no doubt that lights on or off, the globe steels the show. The only potential downside to this jaw-dropping display of phosphorescent artistry is that we don't really know how Super-LumiNova is going to age over the long term, and should it gradually lose its intensity as the years and decades go by, some of the appeal of the lacquered globe is going to be lost as well. Even without the nocturnal glow, however, you'd still have a very striking example of miniature horological painting on your wrist.

Though this wasn't a long-term wear review, I did wear this prototype around the office for a few hours, and while it's not one of those so-comfy-you-forget-it's there wristwatches, it was still quite wearable, especially given its complexity and overall dimensions. I think in part that's due to the fact that while the complications occupy quite a lot of space, they're not especially massive, so the watch is lighter than you'd expect; the sharply downcurved lugs also help to keep things snug. 

As we mentioned in our first look at the Bovet Récital 22 Grand Récital, it's $469,800 in red gold and $502,200 in platinum, and as breathtakingly expensive hyperwatches go, it's a ton of fun for the money. For more info, check it out at bovet.com.