The New York
Times
February 25, 2002
MUSIC REVIEW
Paradox of Beautiful Terror
By PAUL GRIFFITHS
These players are outstanding. On Thursday evening, despite the visually and acoustically unappealing conditions of Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church on West 66th Street, a new chamber group called Music of the Spheres gave a concert that ended with a formidable performance of Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time": music of soaring lyrical beauty, violence, strength and strangeness that these musicians brought vividly to life in every particular. They should be playing it everywhere. They should go on the road with it tomorrow.
The first half of their program was good: a nice performance of Beethoven's A-minor violin sonata, with especially attractive exchanges between the pianist Sara Davis Buechner and the violinist Stephanie Chase in the slow movement, and a fine account, too, of a trio by Khachaturian that brought the clarinetist Jon Manasse into the conversation. But these pieces they might drop — in favor, perhaps, of more Messiaen — when they embark on their international "Quartet for the End of Time" tour.
All four players were remarkable in this piece, separately and
together. They welded themselves into a single brazen instrument when
they had
to, notably in the sixth movement. Messiaen, in his note to the
score, speaks of a paradoxically beautiful terror in this section —
"enormous blocks of purple fury" — and here the effect was indeed hair-
raising, not just when the music was clamorous, but also when it was
weirdly soft, soft with the anticipation of mightiness to come. The same
players could also be full of charm and humor in the "Interlude" that
gently skips away from the apocalyptic visions of the rest of the piece.
Other instances of closely considered and felt togetherness came in the big, slow movements, when Ms. Buechner and her partners — first the keenly focused Darrett Adkins on cello, his quick vibrato always a source of intensity, and then Ms. Chase in the final movement — moved as one, climbing carefully to their climaxes over long periods, keeping the music active, burning.
Certainly no less extraordinary was Mr. Manasse's performance of the movement for clarinet alone, "Abyss of the Birds." He was liquid and graceful in his bird-song impressions, as he had been in the first movement, moving from note to note with complete ease. But the abyss was fearsomely there, too, in single- note crescendos of almost unbelievable length. In these extravagantly long notes and in the great adagios of the other three musicians, time was stopping. One heard the clock slow. But this could not be the end.