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In the year 2020, the world celebrates the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz after the Holocaust. Around the same time, in the Görlitz concentration camp, the composer Oliver Messiaen wrote his "Quartet for the End of Time", a fundamental work in the history of chamber music of the 20th century, which in 2021 will celebrate the 80th anniversary of it's premiere. This album provides the recording of two chamber music works, possibly the most important of the 20th century: The Quartet pour la fin du Temps (Messiaen) and Quatrain II (Takemitsu), both for an unusual instrumental group: clarinet, violin, cello and piano. The Quartet pour la fin du Temps was inspired by the tenth chapter of the Book of Revelation and it is dedicated to the Angel of the Apocalypse. This religious backdrop is accompanied by a great wealth of images that fed Messiaen's creativity and it finds inspiration in multiple and varied sources such as Hindu rhythms, the Greek metrics, the singing of birds... Takemitsu composed Quatrain II in 1976-1977 with the same instrumentation of Messiaen's Quartet. An homage to Messiaen, in the same way that Messiaen's Quartet is based on numeric symbolism, Quatrain is organized around the number four: four in the sense of plenitude, balance, symmetry, four instruments used, four sections... The artists of this album constitute a stable chamber group, they are regular soloists with the most important orchestras in Europe, teachers of the higher schools in Spain and regular masterclass in Europe.
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)