'Imaginatively programmed around two masterpieces of string-quartet writing, this Castalian String Quartet album is a triumph. Lassus’ haunting, late-16th-century setting of a poem about the return of light after darkness sets the very special tone and ushers in Beethoven’s late String Quartet No. 15 in A Minor, which explores mortality while seeking to step outside time. The Castalians play it with moving humanity and empathy for its anguish and hope. Thomas Adès’ The Four Quarters (2011) follows the time of a day, but it too seems to escape time in “The Twenty-fifth Hour”. The album closes centuries earlier with Dowland’s plea for sleep—or perhaps death'

'How often do we listen to a full string quartet programme and feel we’ve been taken to hell and back? Not in a bad way. It’s just that music for this genre can, without respite, amount to quite a heavy emotional load, Whether that thought was instrumental in guiding the excellent Castalian Quartet towards such a beautifully balanced sequence - heavyweight Beethoven and Adès softened, indeed contextualised, by exquisite miniatures by Lassus and Dowland - is neither here not there. The end result is as refreshing as it is profound. There’s a distinctive quality to this ensemble’s playing that fuses personality and oneness ...'

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

"The Castalian Quartet play everything here with such intelligent reflection and revealing precision making -- telling connections between Adés and Beethoven; Lassus and Dowland. [A] beautifully made and imaginative concept album, and a lovely recording as well"

RECORD REVIEW

'This is a highly atmospheric and imaginitvely planned programme ... Prior to Ades' highly accessible and aurally dazzling celbration of time divided, the quartet present what is arguablly the greatest of Beethoven's 'late' quartets ... certainly, the Castalian Quartet give it the outing of its life ... The playing of the Castalian Quartet is consistently sensitive, bright, focussed, agile and, in that glorious slow movement, devout without ever sounding arc or sanctimonious ... this excellent presentation (beautifully recorded in Greyfriars Kirk last year with Paul Baxter) facilitates a highly creative brand of time travel ... there's more to come, we're told, which on the evidence of this can only be a good thing ... '

"Beethoven’s late quartet, No 15 in A minor, Op 132, at its heart, beautifully sprung, precise and detailed. The pivotal “thanksgiving” slow movement is taut and serene. A compelling reason to buy the disc is Thomas Adès’s The Four Quartets, Op 28, tracing the course of the day from the whispered harmonics of Nightfalls to the zestful pizzicatos of Morning Dew, the persistent ostinatos of Days and the disrupted fictions of The Twenty-Fifth Hour ...Many quartets have broken the tradition of single-composer discs. The Castalians do it with top performances and meticulous imagination"

"Between Two Worlds is a magnificent disc; beautifully recorded, still more beautifully played. It leaves an indelible impact ..."

CLASSICAL EXPLORER
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