Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Zephyr Quartet's new release, Epilogue, betrays expectations in the best manner possible. Listeners expecting to hear traditional (or even contemporary) classical music from this Australian string quartet will be in for a big surprise when they find tracks that resemble those of - wait for it - a great modern pop or rock group instead. But there is more: the immediate accessibility of their music almost instantly reveals a great depth, profundity and musical richness, to the point where it will find only few rivals in contemporary composition.

Far from being epigones of the Old, Zephyr Quartet manages to create a coherent, but nonetheless varied mix of pieces which highly encourage repeated listening. Perhaps most striking is the utmost homogeneity of Epilogue, considering that the individual pieces were composed by the individual members of the quartet, providing each ensemble member with the chance to express themselves. And yet, all these pieces fit together like pieces of the same big puzzle, indubitably a testament to the group's remarkable cohesion as such.

Unsurprisingly, but thankfully, this also naturally translates into the actual performance and interpretation. Great care is taken with every phrase, every measure, every note: there is no outshining one another, as one sometimes finds in less equally-weighted string quartets. There is never a struggle, only serene accordance and sublime understanding. Epilogue truly is a group effort, and it's a spectacle - one which impressively demonstrates that the whole is, in fact, a whole lot more than merely the sum of its individual parts.