“I hear the piece a little differently now, and love it a little more, and what more can a recording do?“
The Gramophone wrote a good review about our recording of AKOKA performed by David Krakauer, Matt Haimovitz, Jonathan Crow, Geoffrey Burleson, Socalled. Messiaen’s transcendent 1940-41 work Quartet for the End of Time out of the polite context of a chamber music performance, placing it in a dramatic 21st century setting that drives home its gravity and impact. Read a paragraph of the review below.
The recording itself, too, is very thoughtfully done: the piano is not placed a few feet back as is common, and Geoffrey Burleson’s sensitivity to his colleagues is all the more impressive for being exposed to close scrutiny, though his rhythmic shading in the final ‘Louange’ rather comes and goes. Of the sampled electroacoustic epilogue, the less said the better. The Messiaen performance puts a human face on a disparate body. I hear the piece a little differently now, and love it a little more, and what more can a recording do?
Peter Quantrill
Read the full review here
