The all-star group concept is rarely applied in music of the 20th century (or the 21st). It would seem uniquely ill-suited to Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour le fin du temps, "The Quartet for the End of Time," a work written in a German prisoners-of-war camp and dependent on a kind of mystical ecstasy that would seem to require players of long acquaintance to bring off. Yet what you have here is indubitably a group of all-stars, perhaps of different vintages and some shining brighter than others, but all with marked ...
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The all-star group concept is rarely applied in music of the 20th century (or the 21st). It would seem uniquely ill-suited to Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour le fin du temps, "The Quartet for the End of Time," a work written in a German prisoners-of-war camp and dependent on a kind of mystical ecstasy that would seem to require players of long acquaintance to bring off. Yet what you have here is indubitably a group of all-stars, perhaps of different vintages and some shining brighter than others, but all with marked individual styles. And they bring it off. Swedish clarinetist Martin Fröst, with his trills in the "Abîme des oiseaux," the "Abyss of the Birds," the king of all Messiaen's bird pieces. Violinist Janine Jansen's uncanny vibrato, standing apart from other recordings of the work, bounces effectively off of the warm cello of Torleif Thedéen and the typically aggressive piano of Lucas Debargue. It all coheres even though it has no right to, and that's what marks superior chamber players. Highly...
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