Messiaen: Chamber Works / Hebrides Ensemble

Messiaen: Chamber Works / Hebrides Ensemble - Linn Records - LINN 314 - 6910620

Label: Linn Records
Catalog No: LINN 314
Format: Super Audio Hybrid CD
Release Date: 2010-03-23
Number of Discs: 1
Running time: 1 hr. 14 min.
UPC Code: 691062031424

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Notes & Reviews:

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

The Guardian
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.

The Times
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.

bbc.co.uk - Charlotte Gardner
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.

Sunday Times
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 PiFce pour piano et quatuor a 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.



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Works Details

>Messiaen, Olivier : Quatuor pour la fin du temps
  • Performer: William Conway (Cello)
  • Ensemble: Hebrides Ensemble
  • Notes: St Mary's Church, Haddington (03/17/2007-03/20/2007)
  • Running Time: 43 min. 56 sec.
  • Period Time: Modern
  • Form: Chamber Music
  • Written: 1940-1941

>Messiaen, Olivier : Thème et Variations for Violin and Piano
  • Performer: William Conway (Cello)
  • Ensemble: Hebrides Ensemble
  • Notes: St Mary's Church, Haddington (03/17/2007-03/20/2007)
  • Running Time: 10 min. 47 sec.
  • Period Time: Modern
  • Written: 1932

>Messiaen, Olivier : Piece for Piano and String Quartet
  • Performer: William Conway (Cello)
  • Ensemble: Hebrides Ensemble
  • Notes: St Mary's Church, Haddington (03/17/2007-03/20/2007)
  • Running Time: 3 min. 24 sec.
  • Period Time: Modern
  • Written: 1991

>Messiaen, Olivier : Fantasie for Violin and Piano
  • Performer: William Conway (Cello)
  • Ensemble: Hebrides Ensemble
  • Notes: St Mary's Church, Haddington (03/17/2007-03/20/2007)
  • Running Time: 8 min. 19 sec.
  • Period Time: Modern
  • Written: 1933

>Messiaen, Olivier : Le merle noir
  • Performer: William Conway (Cello)
  • Ensemble: Hebrides Ensemble
  • Notes: St Mary's Church, Haddington (03/17/2007-03/20/2007)
  • Running Time: 6 min. 6 sec.
  • Period Time: Modern
  • Written: 1951