Led more or less by first violinist David Grimal, the conductorless French chamber ensemble Les Dissonances is, in his words, "a laboratory testing ideas to get classical music out of the ghetto to which it is confined without indulging in marketing demagogy." Will this debut disc coupling Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht and Strauss' Metamorphosen accomplish this goal? Probably not, but it is a good, solid start. Les Dissonances is more or less led by Grimal -- he starts and stops them and sets the tempos -- but each player ...
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Led more or less by first violinist David Grimal, the conductorless French chamber ensemble Les Dissonances is, in his words, "a laboratory testing ideas to get classical music out of the ghetto to which it is confined without indulging in marketing demagogy." Will this debut disc coupling Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht and Strauss' Metamorphosen accomplish this goal? Probably not, but it is a good, solid start. Les Dissonances is more or less led by Grimal -- he starts and stops them and sets the tempos -- but each player finds his/her own way through the music, thereby making these performances wonderfully individualistic, and each player is also acutely sensitive to every other player, thereby making these performances marvelously cohesive. The six players of Verklärte Nacht are tonally lush but emotionally edgy and the central violin and cello duets are amazingly affecting. The 23 players of Metamorphosen are tonally sweet but emotionally driven and their harrowing climaxes and especially their...
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