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Quartet For The End Of Time
2018-10-25

Quartet For The End Of Time

By Olivier Messiaen (1908 – 1992)

25 October 2018

Odeion

19:30

“THE IDEA OF THE END OF TIME AS THE END OF PAST AND FUTURE AND THE BEGINNING OF ETERNITY”

Anmari van der Westhuizen and Samson Diamond (members of the renowned Odeion String Quartet), will join with the award-winning soloists Grethe Nöthling and Danrè Strydom to perform one of the 20th century’s most compelling chamber music works, Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. These musicians need no introduction to Bloemfontein audiences.

Composed while he was a prisoner of war, Messiaen's Quartet has continually wowed audiences since its creation. The oppressive conditions within which the work was conceived - set against the backdrop of wartime conditions in Nazi Germany - contribute to the work’s inner narrative. In this unsettling time of global political and social uncertainty, we aim to reframe this work from the past in order to contemplate the present. Music woven together with other art forms elicit and explain a range of emotions where words often fail.

A selection of striking WWII photos will be projected behind the musicians - reflecting the theme and history of the composition.

About the composition
Olivier Messiaen (1908 - 92)
Quatour pour le fin du temps (1940 - 41)

Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time was written in perhaps the most incongruous spot any great score has been composed in: an unheated barrack in Stalag VIII-A, a German prisoner-of-war camp, during the second winter of World War 2. Messiaen wrote this mystical quartet for the instruments available in the camp (clarinet, violin, cello, and piano) in a setting that is arguably among the least conducive for creative work.

The quartet is Messiaen's musical depiction of and rumination on Revelation 10:1-7, which the composer included as a heading to the score:

“I saw a mighty angel descending from heaven, clad in mist, having around his head a rainbow. His face was like the sun, his feet like pillars of fire. He placed his right foot on the sea, his left on the earth, and standing thus on the sea and the earth, he lifted his hand toward heaven and swore by Him who liveth forever and ever, saying: "There shall be time no longer, but at the day of the trumpet of the seventh angel the mystery of God shall be consummated."

ADMISSION

  • R120 (adults)
  • *R80 (pensioners)
  • *R70 (UFS staff)
  • *R50 (students, learners and block bookings of 10+)

Tickets available at Computicket or online at http://online.computicket.com/web/

*Please note that tickets for pensioners, students, learners and UFS staff can only be purchased at a Computicket outlet (Shoprite Checkers) or at the doors since a valid card or ID has to be presented to qualify for the above-mentioned discount.

ENQUIRIES
Ninette Pretorius (tel. 051 401 2504)


Back
A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Production: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Text: William Shakespeare
Director: Gerben Kamper

Venue: Wynand Mouton Theatre

Dates and times:
24 March 2011 19h30
25 March 2009 19h30

Bookings: Computicket (Mimosa Mall and Checkers)
 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta. Bottom, a local craftsman, and others agree to write and produce a play in honour of their marriage. The main plot of Midsummer involves two sets of couples, Hermia in love with Lysander and Helena in love with Demetrius. However Hermia’s father, Egeus, insists on her marrying Demetrius. She and Lysander then decide to elope to the enchanted forest. Helena, having knowledge of this plan, tells Demetrius in order to win his love. Demetrius decides to follow with Helena hot on his trail. In the meantime the players decide to rehearse their play in the same enchanted forest.

Fairies, who have come to bless Theseus’ wedding, are haunting the same wood where the craftsmen and lovers plan to meet. Oberon, king of the fairies, and Titania, his Queen, is in conflict over the possession of a changeling boy. In revenge for his wife’s actions, Oberon sends Puck to gather a flower necessary to make a love juice. This love juice will cause the one who has it squeezed into his/her eye while asleep to fall in love with the first being they see when waking up. After witnessing Demetrius’ distain towards Helena, Oberon then orders Puck to squeeze the love juice in Demetrius’ eyes so that he may fall in love with Helena. Puck however mistakenly squeezes the juice in Lysander’s eyes, causing him to fall in love with Helena.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream has all the ingredients to make an audience enjoy the play: the love stories, the sexual overtones, mistaken identities, the foolishness of Bottom, the magic of the fairies mixed with their human traits of jealousy and unreasonableness, and Puck darting from person to person, trying to right his errors.

A delightful play to open the newly renovated Wynand Mouton Theatre presented in Afrikaans and English. Directed by Gerben Kamper and features the Drama Department's junior staff and Post Graduate students. Tickets available at Computicket

Sound sponsored by BigRig sound.

 

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