CD: Gifts

Its predecessor Meteora - with a trio line-up - was inspired by the monastic hermitage of the same name in north-western Greece. Gifts - recorded by the Weavers quartet - is a kind of memoir of their own musical socialization. The sensitive intimacy of the quartet is most evident on Gifts in the album's closing track: "Echoes", which recalls the dreamlike Larghetto from Handel's D major violin sonata in shimmering vagueness and, in its movement between origin and development, between reflection and projection, impressively points out that Gifts is not least a spiritual album.