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The most helpful favorable review
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188 of 208 people found the following review helpful:
"the overwhelming grandeur..."
Messaien wrote "Quartet for the End of Time" in a Nazi prison camp. This work was first performed by half-starved prisoners on broken instruments, to an audience of arrogant Nazi prison camp guards and officials, and the people they had enslaved in the name of the Third Reich. The work that Messaien composed in the face of this titanic evil was not a work...
Published on July 6, 2000 by happydogpotatohead
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13 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
Not overly impressed
I bought this CD expecting to be transported the way I was with an old LP recording (by whom I do not remember) in student days. I wish I could name what I don't like about the current CD and performers. There's a lack of passion, but I don't know how to define that. Here's a tiny thing: the lack of pitch articulation in the important final clarinet note of the first...
Published on July 7, 2004
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188 of 208 people found the following review helpful:
"the overwhelming grandeur...", July 6, 2000
Messaien wrote "Quartet for the End of Time" in a Nazi prison camp. This work was first performed by half-starved prisoners on broken instruments, to an audience of arrogant Nazi prison camp guards and officials, and the people they had enslaved in the name of the Third Reich.The work that Messaien composed in the face of this titanic evil was not a work of anger or bitterness. It was not a work of resignation to an inevitable fate or a hymn to depression. Messaien chose to represent, musically, the end of all things, as described in the Book of Revelations in the Bible. In its austerity and its serenity, the Quartet informs the Nazis: You are in control now, in this place, at this time, but your control is not absolute. Your Reich will not last 1000 years. You may attempt whatever you like and kill millions, but your time will be done, and you will be banished to nothingness. Messaien hid his message behind the context of the Book of Revelations, which he interpreted not in the fashion of modern day "born again" fundamentalists, but in a mystical way, as a spiritual event that had resonance in his time. What was Hitler but an Anti-Christ, a beast attempting to set himself up as a God? Messaien called upon the power of the Word and set it to music, a music that was intended to work as a memory of redemption, a reminder that evil cannot, and will not, triumph over good no matter how profound the evil may be. It is also the sound of a man calling on his God to avenge the evil that has overtaken the world. If the Nazis had truly known what Messaien was telling them, they would have shot him. Musically, Messaien was forced to write the Quartet for the instruments he had available to him. He also had to take into account that the instruments were half-broken; for example, the piano that was used in the original performance was missing strings and therefore there were notes that it could not play. Messaien wrote with all this in mind, and with his subject matter in mind. The Quartet is definitely a 20th Century work. Messaien had been writing works outside of the accepted "classical" form for some time, but here he abandons time signatures, uses extreme chromaticism and wide tonal variations, sweeps of dynamic range, and unexpected, perhaps unprecedented, tonalities and atonalities. But he did all this with focus. So many 20th Century composers made music that seemed an academic exercise. Messaien, here, uses every musical expression in his power, every type of music that he knows how to write, every sound that he hears in his head, to write the Quartet for the End of Time, in the service of God and Man and Freedom. This sets the Quartet utterly apart, in my mind, from any other piece of 20th Century classical music, and elevates it to a higher level than nearly any other 20th Century music. Only the musician Albert Ayler would come close to expressing the kind of intense spirituality combined with overwhelming musical technique expressed here. I can only add here that this performance, by these artists, is and has been the definitive performance of the Quartet for the End of Time, and that they bring this music to life with conviction and clarity. It feels cheap and commonplace to tell people that they should "own" this piece of music; it is far too majestic to be "owned" in any sense by anyone. The Quartet for the End of Time is one of the most profound works of art that the human race has ever produced. You should have this, not out of any sense of acquisitiveness or one-upmanship, but because it provides a doorway into the heart of God and the heart of humanity that is nearly unparalleled in the history of music.
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58 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
Rebirth of a soul, March 17, 2004
In the March 22, 2004 issue of The New Yorker, music critic Alex Ross shares the fascinating story of the origins and first performance in January, 1941 of Quartet for the End of Time during Messiaen's confinement as a prisoner of war in Stalag VIIIA. (I'd urge you to read this compelling and brief article, as well as Rebecca Rischin's book "For the End of Time: The Story of the Messiaen Quartet.")Ross takes a moment to single out this recording as the finest of this work, saying: "The group Tashi achieved [the total unanimity that makes a great performance of the Quartet seem like a mind-reading seance] in an as yet unsurpassed recording on the RCA label." The last sentences of the Ross piece are wonderful: "This is the music of one who expects paradise not only in a single awesome hereafter but also in the happenstance epiphanies of daily life. In the end, Messiaen's apocalypse has little to do with history and catastrophe; instead, it records the rebirth of an ordinary soul in the grip of extraordinary emotion. Which is why the Quartet is as overpowering now as it was on that frigid night in 1941."
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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
STILL A CLASSIC, July 2, 2005
The prodigiously gifted son of an even more prodigious father, Peter Serkin has shown a special interest in Messiaen very like the interest his father showed in Reger. I gather that he and his three collaborators here formed the group Tashi specifically to perform this piece. Their account has always had the status of a classic. Other fine performances have come on to the scene since 1976, but as I myself have recently come by a particularly good and eloquent effort not available on its own, I thought it might be worth seeing how the Tashi version justified its eminence a quarter of a century on. Coming quickly to the bottom line, I would say that any collector looking for only one version of the work need have no second thoughts about acquiring this one. There are things I myself prefer in other versions and there are things that I still like best in this. It is all really a matter of fine detail and any listener's individual temperament.
The work was composed and first performed in a prisoner-of-war camp during WWII. What it may prove regarding the triumph of good over evil in this world I do not propose to assess. To me, it is certainly a musical statement in some senses, but not in quite that sense. What Messiaen's music, in bad times as well as in good, always expresses is his unshakable and semi-mystical Catholic faith. Whatever his circumstances, even these, he felt and saw everything against the backdrop of eternity as his faith defined that. In happier times his music has a sense of relaxation and even of self-indulgence that are naturally absent here, but he is never introverted. His vision is always looking to the far side, and for me music, however and wherever it originated, is still just music.
The new version that I have just obtained is actually an older version, from 1971, than this, and it is performed by the stellar consort of Erich Gruenberg, Gervase de Peyer, William Pleeth and Michel Beroff. It comes in a 2-disc EMI Classics set with no less than Turangalila, which not many will consider as a makeweight, and is probably out of the reckoning for anyone looking just for the quartet. Where it sheds a specially interesting light on the Tashi version is precisely in being earlier. To a certain extent Tashi have set a standard for subsequent performance. Tashi's approach is in general lighter, with more tonal and tempo contrasts, and with less overt emotion. Given my own general outlook, this is an approach I respond to a fraction more as it seems to me to leave behind the ghastly background to the work's composition in the way I believe the composer's mind and soul did. I personally take greatly to the occasional sudden hush, and I take especially to the special touch Peter Serkin deploys in the composer's characteristic long chains of quiet chords. Also very impressive to my ears was Richard Stoltzman's big solo in the `Abyss of the Birds' with its slow tempo and big dynamic range.
From any point of view I should call this a performance in the great category. The recording is very good, and if cost is a factor it seems to be competitive in that respect as well.
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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
MESSIAEN IMMERSION, February 25, 2003
Prophetic, restless, passionate, sad and fervently devout music from a 1941 stalag-imprisoned Messiaen [1908-1992], this 1975 recording continues to remain a constant source of revelation and wonder for me. In their groundbreaking performance, Serkin, Kavafian, Sherry and Stoltzman mine this work for every ounce of its endless value--- coaxing a phrase to shimmer, dwelling within a movement's infinite sorrow, or opening a vein of evocative spirituality--- and at all times retain a shattering clarity of vision that both penetrates and humbles. As the ensemble known as Tashi, these superb musicians bring an otherworldly ambience to a chamber work aptly named, and with their devotion, exemplary craftsmanship, technique and concentration they persuade most powerfully. The sound given the artists is as truthful, lean, and haunting as their performance.
[Running time: 47:25]
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27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
Vignette, June 1, 2001
I agree with the other reviewers that this performance of the Quartet for the End of Time is the best available. It is difficult to find words to say about this most elevating and moving composition, so I will share a vignette. In 1982 I played this recording, on vinyl, one Sunday morning for my girlfriend (now my wife). Long after it was over, when it was possible once more to speak, she broke the silence with these words: "This is what God listens to on Sunday morning."
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
AWESOME !, September 25, 1998
By A Customer
I am a devoted Messiaen fan, and this is the finest interpretation of the quartet I have ever heard. Even the low frequency background noise during the clarinet solo doesn't detract from the superb performance. These artists clearly understand Messiaen's music; their intelligence and sensitivity are coupled with amazing technical abilities. This performance is, in my opinion, the 'gold standard'.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
An unmissable tribute to a composer calling on mysticism in a time of anguish, June 13, 2006
Peter Serkin championed Messiaen long before most American musicians did, and this 1976 tribute marked a definite break in public image from his father, Rudolf Serkin, who I am sure never recorded a piece of French music, from any era, in his life. I don't know how the reviewer below manages to get 98 people to approve of his reviews in a matter of weeks (!); however, Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time wasn't written in a ocncentration camp but a POW camp (the former being a death camp), and there is nothing political about this work. In fact, all of Messiaen's mystical Catholic refernces are generally impossible to match to the kind of music he writes.
The expression markings here include such words as extatique, paradisiaque, avec amour, terrible. Tashi takes ecstasy, paradise, and love to heart. Theirs is a delicate reading, and they take pains to find added wit, color, and sensuousness in Messiaen's idiom, which can get cryptic and tiresome over the long haul. Not here--Stoltzman in particular brings out an amazing range of tone in his clarinet playing.
This is Messiaen's most popular work because of its overall serenity and its lack of tough dissonances. After Tashi, no one will ever perform it better, I imagine, even though there are other approaches that would bring out the work's more overt romanticism and song. Highly recommended.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Restoration: A Work of Art for the Soul as a Troubled Year Ends, December 31, 2005
On the last day of a year that has been fraught with calamity, war, disease, natural disasters, disillusionment with government, and countless personal tragedies, this wholly successful work offers a sense of balance just as it did at its premiere in January of 1941 in the presence of a Nazi concentration camp.
Quatuor pour la fin du temps, for violin, cello, clarinet, & piano by Olivier Messiaen is a challenging musical masterpiece not only in its construction but also in its message. Though there are gratefully many recordings of this deeply moving quartet available, this performance by Tashi - Ida Kavafian violin, Peter Serkin piano, Fred Sherry cello, and Richard Stoltzman clarinet - retains its position as the most important interpretation available.
So much has been written about this whisper to the sanctity of the human soul that both books and endless reviews abound. Most people know the history of the work's writing and premiere. But the proof of a great masterpiece lies in the viability of the work through time and by judgment on its own merits. Recommendation: spend time with this very affordable recording and get to know this Messiaen classic through this performance while it remains available. It is superlative in every way. Grady Harp, December 05
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Imagining the end..., February 6, 2007
I wonder how many other masterpieces were in fact lost in prisoner or war camps. We shouldn't be listening to this work today. It should not have survived. Perhaps Messiaen should not have either. But he did, and it did, and we are lucky because of it.
The quartet, composed for violin, clarinet, cello and piano because those were the instruments Messiaen's fellow inmates played, is in, oddly, eight movements instead of the Biblical seven. It is prefaced by a quotation from the Apocalypse of St. John Chapter 10: "I saw a mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud; and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire." That moment is depicted on the cover of this CD. The eight movements describe the harmonious "silence" of the heavens (including the awakening of birds--birds fascinated Messiaen all his life), Vocalise for the angel who announces the end of Time,* the Abyss of the birds, with a very technically-demanding clarinet solo (as an amateur clarinetist myself I find it hard to just play it all in tune, never mind the extreme dynamics), a bouncy scherzo interlude, which is the brightest part of the work, Praise to the Eternity of Jesus, which is deeply moving and spiritual if pulled off right, Dance of Fury for the Seven Trumpets, which is a real rhythmic tour-de-force (try to figure out the time signatures), Cluster of Rainbows, for the angel who announces the end of time (supremely haunting) and finally Praise to the Immortality of Jesus, which is supposed to represent the man Jesus more than the divine Son of God.
In terms of time, the work is extraordinarily complex, even in this post-Stravinsky universe. In fact, I couldn't begin to tell you I understand all that's going on, and would love to get my hands on a score. But the sonorities of this unusual combination of instruments makes you really pay closer attention--the unusual message is heard in an unusual voice. Use of dissonance is extremely intelligent--compared to so many "modern" compositions I hear today that claim to be profound (the Fourth Concerto for Orchestra by Robert Holloway, which I just heard premiered the other night in San Francisco, comes to mind), this score uses dissonance and consonance for a very high purpose, very judiciously, and not just because it can. Oh, and the ending pages of this work are a stunner, one of the most chilling finishes I've ever heard in a work. It's like the end of Mahler's 9th without the sentimental comfort--and yes, next to this, Mahler's 9th sounds sentimental and comforting.
This is all-around the best performance I've ever heard of the Quartet, though a Philips recording with Vera Beths, George Pieterson, Anner Bijlsma and Reinbert de Leeuw is better-recorded. They don't quite reach the heights and depths that these four musicians do, however, particularly in the Abyss of the Birds and the Praise to the Immortality. Despite some intonation issues by Stoltzman, he's more soulful in his lengthy solo than the more-in-control Pieterson.
The rest of the forces here are magnificent too. Ida Kavafian has always struck me as an underrated violinist. For a while she played with the Beaux Arts Quartet, but recently I have not seen her with them--what happened?
The Quartet was premiered to an audience of fellow prisoners and prison guards in Stalag VIII-A in Görlitz, Germany on January 15, 1941. "Never have I been heard with as much attention and understanding," Messiaen later said. Considering the effect this music has on us, as we arrive warm and fed at the concert hall after the attendant parks our Mercedes or Lexus, how this work must have felt to the starving cold war prisoners of 1941 surely cannot be imagined.
*The "end of time" is not purely an allusion to the Apocalypse, the work's ostensible subject, but also refers to the way in which, through rhythm and harmony, Messiaen used time in a way that was completely different from the music of his predecessors or contemporaries.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Beyond Time, September 27, 2008
Not long ago, I listened to Olivier Messiaen's *Quartet for the End of Time* for the first time. I did not know what to make of it when it started, but by the time it ended it had made a deep impression. Since then I have listened to it several times more. Without the description provided by Messiaen, I wonder how many listeners would have guessed what the quartet was all about, or called it one of the greatest works of the twentieth century. I can't prove it, but possibly critics would have called it an interesting experiment. Yet the music taken together with its explanation (including the circumstances under which it was composed) communicates a compelling vision. I have attempted to convey some of Messiaen's vision with the aid of quotes from his description (as translated in the liner notes from the original French).
The music itself is unusual. Not only the choice of instruments (violin, cello, clarinet and piano), but the way Messiaen used them, is striking. The full quartet performs in only four of the eight movements that comprise the work. The piano has no part in the brief fourth movement; the fifth movement, both reverent and moving, is for cello and piano only; the eighth movement mirrors the fifth, but this time is for violin and piano; and the third movement - lasting for about eight minutes - is for solo clarinet only. We know that music often expresses emotions, but here Messiaen apparently tried to express visions he had of celestial colors, of rainbows, of the vast cosmos. He related sound to vision. I give fragments of what he wrote: "... amid notes of shining sound and a halo of trills..." (on the first movement); "From the piano, soft cascades of blue-orange chords..." (2nd mvmt); "Music of stone ... as huge blocks of livid fury or icelike frenzy" (6th mvmt); "I pass into the unreal and submit ecstatically to a vortex, a dizzying interpretation of superhuman sounds and colors. These fiery swords, these rivers of blue-orange lava, these sudden stars: Behold the cluster, behold the rainbows!" (7th mvmt).
The third movement, 'Abyss of the birds', with its eloquent clarinet solo, provides an important key for interpreting the whole. Messiaen writes, "The abyss is Time, with its sadness and tedium." A new and strange idea, at first. Abyss is a spatial term, even when used figuratively. But here the abyss is time with a capital T, not depth. The birds or what they stand for - "they are our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows and for jubilant outpourings of song!" (in contrast to sadness and tedium) - are trapped in time, awaiting release. In that sense, then, time is the abyss from which there is no escape, not by our own powers. Messiaen based his work on an excerpt from the New Testament Book of Revelation, Chapter 10. Part of the excerpt reads, "There shall be time no longer, but on the day of the trumpet of the seventh angel, the mystery of God shall be consummated." In that only is the release.
Messiaen, a deeply religious Roman Catholic, was a prisoner of war in a German camp during World War II when he wrote the quartet, and had experienced the "sadness and tedium" of time, in addition to suffering the harsh conditions. We can only imagine how that must have affected his thoughts, emotions and creative effort. He dreamt of release - from prison, surely, but perhaps more so from the confines of time - and expressed it in the music. The last movement, 'Praise to the immortality of Jesus', ends with the solo violin, accompanied by soft piano notes, rising upward, upward, ever more faintly, upward. "Its slow rising to a supreme point is the ascension of man toward his God, of the son of God toward his Father, of the mortal newly made divine toward paradise."
Is Quartet for the End of Time an interesting experiment? Let the listener/ interpreter decide. I think it is much more than that, although I am always wary of using superlatives such as "greatest" or "best". I will add that this was not the only time Messiaen expressed himself in this manner. About eight years earlier, he had composed *L'Ascension* (The Ascension), a set of four pieces that he termed Meditations. The last of these depicts the prayer of Christ rising toward his Father, a reference to verses taken from the Gospel of John, Chapter 17. There, as in the last movement of the quartet, the music keeps rising upward, toward heaven as Messiaen intended to signify. His religion was integral to his life and, inevitably, to his modes of expression.
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