Fin Du Temps

Fin du temps

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 who lifts his hand toward Heaven and says: « There shall be time no longer, but at the day of the trumpet of the seventh angel the mystery of God shall be consummated ». Toru Takemitsu admired his work and his harmonious language, which influenced his own style. Takemitsu composed Quatrain for clarinet, violin, cello, piano and orchestra, and Quatrain II in 1976-1977 with the same instrumentation of Messiaen’s Quartet, but without an orchestra. 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 as the lines that make up a stanza in a quatrain, four instruments used, four sections into groups of four bars…