Reto Bieri & Meta4 – Quasi morendo (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:12 minutes | 943 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ECM New Series
Reto Bieri’s solo album “Contrechant”, released in 2011, was widely praised for the Swiss clarinettist’s beauty of tone and his uncommon expressiveness with extended instrumental techniques. “Quasi Morendo” begins with a new exploration of one of the pieces featured on “Contrechant”, Salvatore Sciarrino’s Let Me Die Before I Wake (1982), with its “whisper-quiet sound world of harmonics, multiphonics and tremolandos” (The Guardian). Reto Bieri is then joined by Finnish string quartet Meta4 for a profound interpretation of Johannes Brahms’s Quintet Op. 115 (1891). Inspired by Brahms’ friendship with clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld, the quintet sounds freer, and more idyllic, than the composer’s earlier chamber music, yet is one of his most meticulously constructed works. The album closes with Gérard Pesson’s Nebenstück (1998), a ghostly re-arrangement of Brahms’s Ballade, Op. 10 No. 4.
Tracklist:
1. Let me die before I wake (10:00)
2. Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115: 1. Allegro (13:33)
3. Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115: 2. Adagio (10:52)
4. Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115: 3. Andantino (04:50)
5. Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115: 4. Con moto (10:12)
6. Nebenstück (08:45)
Personnel:
Reto Bieri, clarinet
Meta4 Quartet:
Antti Tikkanen, violin
Minna Pensola, violin
Atte Kilpeläinen, viola
Tomas Djupsjöbacka, violoncello
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