Debussy’s music reveals characteristics that justifiably move it into the proximity of Impressionist painting, as it produces moving paintings, landscapes of sound, and soundscapes in the narrowest sense of the word that can draw the listener into the middle of the picture.
Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, completed in 1903, had to be and was compared with Debussy’s quartet. At the same time, it can be seen here how Ravel’s musical diction – based on Debussy’s – prepared the way for French Modernism.
Like only a few of his colleagues, the Briton Thomas Adès, born in 1971, is capable of fusing traditional elements from music history, including obvious references to existing compositions, with modern sound production, into an individual style appealing directly to the listener.

“To play like this, to narrate like this, there needs to be a deep emotional connection to the musical text on the side of the performer, but also a mental preparation which clarifies the complexity of the demands and elucidates the course of events from start to finish. This music has a phenomenally gifted narrator in the Signum Quartet, who understand how to emotionally convey the tangible aspects of Adès’s thought in its musically abstracted form and in so doing present the attentive, absorbed listener with a range of suggestively helpful interpretations. Introspection and refined emotional nuances also define this reading of the Ravel quartet, in which we, as in the preceding works, marvel at the ensemble’s balance of sound, which transforms the music into a kind of sensual dream and portrays the delicacy of Ravel’s music completely.” Pizzicato