This is perhaps Olivier Messiaen's most famous work. Yet as famously, albeit sadly, conceived it may be, Messiaen's finest chamber work is a dance with circumstance and a tremendous flowering in the face of adversity. Written while the composer was a wartime prisoner in 1941, Quartet for the End of Time sounds teetery, vulnerable, and brittle. But it also features shearing whips from the clarinet that make the creative turbulence unmistakable. Christoph Eschenbach's piano is astounding, playing quiet atmospheres in the second movement—and again in the final movement—that couple with the strings to set a diaphanous feel, one where light, scant though it is, enlivens the mood. Messiaen envisioned the colors, he recalled, as a partial result of limited food rations, and the shoddy instruments on which he and others gave the original performance (while still imprisoned) only accentuated how sensitively he shaped the piece's dynamics. Although it builds slowly, this is an inventively rhythmic piece, with the clarinet-led ensemble pelting quietude with motion. Note also that the quartet's first movement is Messiaen's first incursion into bird sounds, something which occupied him for the rest of his composing career

Andrew Bartlett