Messiaen: Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the end of Time) - SACD
This page lists our only recording of Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the end of Time), by Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (1908-92) on SACD.
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Includes the first recording of Fantaisie, a work for violin and piano, thought to be lost until it was re-discovered
by Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen and then published in 2007.
SACD
$16.75
Usually despatched in 4 - 5 working days.
Charlotte Gardner
9th May 2008
“...their sound evokes both the work's wartime genesis and its religious intensity...this disc is more than just a premiere recording [of Fantasie]. This is special playing from a special group of musicians.”
8th June 2008
***
“The novelty on this disc of five items, including the group’s stirring account of Quatuor pour la fin du temps, is the Fantasie for violin and piano, which Messiaen wrote in 1933 to play with his first wife, the violinist Claire Delbos, and which was thought lost until it turned up among the composer’s papers last year. An eight-minute movement, beginning with a defiant, distinctive melody for the piano in octaves, it is in Messiaen’s liveliest, ripest, if early, style. His three-minute Pièce pour piano et quatuor à cordes is a marvellously incisive, birdsong-inflected tribute to the publisher Alfred Schlee. The flute-and-piano bird piece Le Merle noir is bristlingly despatched.”
23rd May 2008
****
“All [the] pieces get vivid, beautifully judged performances from the Hebrides Ensemble, and the account of the much more frequently recorded Quartet stands up well to the competition, too.”
31st May 2008
****
“In celebration of Messiaen's centenary, the Hebrides Ensemble gives a quite dark performance of the Quartet for the End of Time. William Conway's cello burns with weighty intensity. In fact, a little spring and lightness would not have gone amiss, especially in the Danse de la Fureur, where the syncopated rhythm lacks bounce. Also included is Le Merle Noir, the black thrush, the first birdsong that Messiaen turned into music. The solo flute burrs authentically.”
Click on any of the works listed above for alternative recordings.
