Quatuor Ebène - Fiction (2010) FLAC

Described by the New York Times as "a string quartet that can easily morph into a jazz band" the Quatuor Ébène presents a program of 16 pop and jazz tracks, with guest appearances from a quartet of female stars: soprano Natalie Dessay, jazz singer Stacey Kent, film icon Fanny Ardant and Spanish pop star Luz Casal.

"In everything we have been willing to do musically - during all that time spent practicing Haydn, Beethoven or Bartók - there has always been a concealed dream of improvising and creating a new approach to playing string quartet," confess the members of the multi-award-winning Quatuor Ébène. Fiction album brings that dream out into the open.

The Ébène's first Virgin Classics CD, quartets by Debussy, Ravel and Fauré, was Gramophone's 2009 Record of the Year, also winning Germany's Echo Klassik Award 2009, Belgium's Prix Caecilia 2009 and a French Victoire de la Musique 2010, but this new collection, Fiction, sees them setting their special stamp on numbers from the pop and jazz repertoire. Its 16 tracks embrace figures as diverse as Charlie Chaplin, Bruce Springsteen, Chick Corea, Harold Arlen, Wayne Shorter, Lennon & McCartney, Brad Mehldau and, in the title track, Nicholas Roubanis, composer of the main theme to Quentin Tarantino's career-defining film, Pulp Fiction.

Guest appearances are made by Virgin Classics' resident diva Natalie Dessay, American jazz singer Stacey Kent, iconic French actress Fanny Ardant (who proved a sexy chanteuse in the 2002 movie Huit femmes), Spanish pop star Luz Casal and drummer Richard Héry. The quartet's members even do some singing themselves, with viola-player Mathieu Herzog taking the vocal lead in Springsteen's `Streets of Philadelphia' and all four performing a cappella in their rendition (en français) of `Someday My Prince Will Come," from Walt Disney's Snow White - which has formed a surprise encore in such august venues as New York's Carnegie Hall.