This recording of Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps was made in 2018 but not released until the spring of 2022. Even if there were pandemic-related issues, one can only marvel at the delay. The recording is superb, and anyone who paid attention to it would likely have been motivated to get it into listeners' hands (or onto hard drives) as soon as possible. The Amatis Trio has gained plenty of attention as an up-and-coming chamber group, and here, joined by clarinetist Ib Hausmann, the trio cements its reputation by taking on the Quatuor pour la fin du temps, a work that is genuinely difficult, both technically and interpretively. It is not just the long lines that have to be maintained through periods of slow-moving, almost static music. It is that the performance captures the mixture of rigor and religious mysticism in Messiaen's quartet, the feeling of floating waves that has to be somehow added to the structures. Consider Hausmann's work in the treacherous solo clarinet movement, "Abîme des oiseaxu." There is a remarkable kind of warmth here that is as compelling as it is rare, and Germany's Südwestfunk Radio from its studio in Kaiserslautern reproduces it in full.
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