The commercial success of this 2021 release from the Quatuor Ébène may seem surprising, inasmuch as some of the music is often forbidding for general audiences. Schoenberg's murky Verklärte Nacht is not exactly a favorite, and Henri Dutilleux's Ainsi la nuit, in isolation, is the kind of jarring, squeaking work that may make audiences head for the exits. In this context, however, listeners get something to hang their perceptions on, as the various exotic sounds are defined as nocturnal. The album's title comes from the ...
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The commercial success of this 2021 release from the Quatuor Ébène may seem surprising, inasmuch as some of the music is often forbidding for general audiences. Schoenberg's murky Verklärte Nacht is not exactly a favorite, and Henri Dutilleux's Ainsi la nuit, in isolation, is the kind of jarring, squeaking work that may make audiences head for the exits. In this context, however, listeners get something to hang their perceptions on, as the various exotic sounds are defined as nocturnal. The album's title comes from the central work, Raphaël Merlin's Night Bridge, some of whose movements are modernist elaborations on popular and jazz melodies; one of these is the 1944 Thelonious Monk jazz standard. It's a novel concept, and it does seem to provide a "bridge" between the Schoenberg and Dutilleux pieces in an indefinable way. The Quatuor Ébène is one of the sharpest quartets on the scene, and they are especially good in modern repertory. Their reading of Verklärte Nacht here catches the overheated quality...
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