Bambú Ensemble was expressly created as a string octet and its players are trained in the careful cultivation of the distinguishing features of their literature – from Mendelssohn or Gade to more contemporary offerings. On this album, therefore, they demonstrate an intuitive and eloquent ability to deliver (or “pronounce” – in the rhetorical, Ciceronian sense of pronunciatio) not only the cyclical-thematic density of the massive symphonic structure in nine interconnected themes that is the magnificent Octet composed by a precocious and utterly inspired Enescu, but also the exceptional academic exercise in counterpoint that displays the skill and brilliance of the young Shostakovich, and the nocturnal garden of multiple textures woven around a single motif created by Javier Martínez Campos, transferring the concept of counterpoint from the thematic or motivic to the terrain of experimentation in timbre and sound.

Listening to their album, therefore, is an adventure which will undoubtedly open up the map of any music-lover’s imagination – come aboard the good ship Bambú and, like Marco Polo on his travels, embark on a voyage of marvels upon the ocean of music.