Melba Recordings

"... a label of fragrant distinction"

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A Lotus Blossoming

14/01/2012
Courier Mail (Australia)
Patricia Kelly
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Quick on the heels of its Arcadia Lost disc, Melbourne record company Melba presents A Lotus Blossoming. The lotus symbolises a place of indolent enjoyment but there wouldn’t have been much fun, indolent or otherwise, in the World War II concentration camp where French composer Olivier Messiaen wrote Quartet for the End of Time. One of the 20th century’s most poignant creations, the quartet premiered in 1941 as part of a music enterprise to help the composer and fellow sufferers survive the ‘cruelty and horrors of the camp’. Ensemble Liaison players David Griffiths (clarinet), Svetlana Bogosavljevic (cello), Timothy Young (piano), Wilma Smith (violin) carve the changing mystical imagery of its 11 movements with intense feeling, after delivering Trio in D minor from Austrian composer Alexander von Zemlinsky. He also felt the arrows of that war and his no-nonsense approach to woe pairs well with the Messiaen in the clear focus of this penetrating performance