Olivier Messiaen - Hebrides Ensemble - The Guardian

Though the Quartet for the End of Time is by far the best-known work in this collection of Messiaen's chamber music, it is the other four pieces here that make the disc especially interesting. None is very substantial, but they all occupy intriguing positions in the composer's output. The two works for violin and piano - the rather Franck-like Theme and Variations and a single-movement Fantasie rediscovered last year - were composed for his first wife, the violinist Claire Delbos, in 1932 and 1933 respectively. The Piece for Piano and String Quartet, alternating stark chords with the song of the garden warbler, was one of his last compositions, written in 1991. Le Merle Noir for flute and piano from 1952 was Messiaen's first work to specifically identify bird song. All these pieces get vivid, beautifully judged performances from the Hebrides Ensemble, and the account of the much more frequently recorded Quartet stands up well to the competition, too.