MUSIC REVIEW : MESSIAEN ‘QUARTET FOR END OF TIME’ PERFORMED

Though most serious music lovers have heard of it, Olivier Messiaen’s long and difficult “Quartet for the End of Time” is not performed often. So listeners filled the cozy Unitarian Community Church in Santa Monica Friday night to hear a local group perform the work.

Inspired by an excerpt from the Book of Revelation, Messiaen wrote the piece in 1940 while a prisoner of war in Germany, and he has described it as “transcendental.”

To be sure, it is carefully wrought, artfully simple in design and poignant in meaning. Like many of the composer’s works, it uses tightly controlled rhythmic patterns and a colorful and personal harmonic language, and it unfolds at a measured pace.

Unfortunately, most listeners cannot slow down their concept of time sufficiently, and they find the Quartet uncomfortably long, static and repetitious--which it is.

Nevertheless, pianist Gloria Cheng, violinist Jeff Gauthier, clarinetist David Ocker and cellist Edward Willett infused their reading with a rare kind of spiritual unity, a logical sense of flow and fine control; only very minor intonation flaws or occasional instances of strident tone detracted.

Earlier, the performers gave clean readings of a minor work by Ives and a vacuous one by Dane Rudhyar. Cheng opened the program with an elegant account of Rudhyar’s delightfully evocative “Stars.”