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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
THE BOW PROJECT

THE BOW PROJECT
with the “Nightingale String Quartet” from Denmark and Mantombi Matotiyana
26 Julie 2009
Odeion
16:00

 


The UFS Department of Music presents the third concert in the series of Special Project Concerts: “THE BOW PROJECT”.

The Bow Project was conceived by New Music Indaba director Michael Blake in 2002 as part of the National Arts Festival. It has developed over the past 6 years as a platform for South African composers from many different traditions to study and reinterpret or reimagine, for string quartet, the uhadi bow songs of the great Nofinishi Dywili. It was always the intention to undertake a national tour with highlights of the project, and to record that programme for CD release. Following the presentation of parts of the Bow Project in Europe last year, this has now become possible. A young female string quartet from Denmark – the Nightingale String Quartet - consisting of Gunvor Sihm (violin), Josefine Dalsgaard (violin), Marie Louise Broholt Jensen (viola) and Louisa Schwab (cello) will join Mantombi Matotiyana for a two-week tour of concerts and workshops plus a CD recording in South Africa in July 2009.

The original artistic objective of the project was to encourage South African composers to engage with traditional music as a compositional resource. Rather than just using some indigenous elements in their work, they were each asked to make a transcription of a song, and use that as the basis for their work. The Bow Project concerts at the National Arts Festival, with the combination of Mantombi Matotiyana singing the original songs, and a string quartet playing the composers reinterpretations, regularly drew full houses and several times required extra performances. The Bow Project has been hailed both nationally and internationally as one of the most important South African musical projects ever.

ADMISSION:
R50 (adults)
R30 (pensioners, students and learners)
Tickets available at Computicket (Shoprite/Checkers shops, Mimosa Mall Information desk, online at www.computicket.com) or at the doors. Telephonic bookings: 011 – 340 8000 or 083 915 8000.

ENQUIRIES:
Ninette Pretorius (tel. 051 - 401 2504)
 

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