RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR

I G N O T

I E N M

J U L

:

P H O T O G R A P H Y

CHAMBER

WINNER An ambitious programme centred on Dutilleux and Schoenberg

A triumphant journey from an outstanding string quartet

There are various criteria in play when we consider an album for a Gramophone Award. Obviously, it needs to be a performance of the highest technical standard and the most persuasive emotional and intellectual conviction. Excellent engineering, thoughtful presentation and imaginative choice of repertoire all play a part too: does this recording bring something original and enduring to the table? But we also have our personal notions: little private tests that we apply when deciding whether a recording really is as good as our ears suggest. For me, it’s a question: would I give this recording, unsolicited, as a gift to someone who – knowing nothing of, or perhaps even prejudiced against, a particular work – I hoped to ‘convert’?

Quatuor Ébène’s ‘’Round Midnight’ delivers an uncompromising ‘yes’ on every count. Major chamber works by Schoenberg and Dutilleux receive performances that somehow combine

THE RECORDING

‘’Round Midnight’ Music by Dutilleux, Merlin and Schoenberg Quatuor Ebène with Antoine Tamestit va Nicolas Altstaedt vc Erato 9029 66419 0 (12/21) Producer & Engineer Fabrice Planchat 103 VOTES

RUNNERS UP

Brahms String Sextets Belcea Qt with Tabea Zimmermann; Jean-Guihen Queyras Alpha (4/22) 88 VOTES Stravinsky The Soldier’s Tale Isabelle Faust; Alexander Melnikov et al Harmonia Mundi (11/21) 62 VOTES

burning urgency with forensic clarity; yearning sensuality with a complete lack of sentimentality. As Richard Whitehouse put it in his original review, the Ebènes (and their two seamlessly integrated guests) ‘are as committed to savouring the smallest detail as to elaborating these on the largest canvas’. These interpretations would be recommendable in themselves, but ‘’Round Midnight’ links them with Night Bridge by the Ebènes’ cellist Raphaël Merlin. Four nocturnally themed jazz standards are transformed into … well, you have to hear it, really, but the result lifts the entire album on to another level: tugging at hidden threads while illuminating Schoenberg and Dutilleux alike. This is transformative chamber music-making of compelling poetry and imagination: an experience that you won’t quickly forget. Richard Bratby

Sponsored by

38 GRAMOPHONE GRAMOPHONE RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR 2022

gramophone.co.uk