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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)


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Ben Schoeman Piano Recital

Ben Schoeman Piano Recital
24 August 2017
Odeion
19:30

The South African pianist Ben Schoeman has won major prizes, including the first grand prize in the 11th UNISA Vodacom International Piano Competition (Pretoria, 2008), first prize and gold medal in the Royal Over-Seas League Music Competition (London, 2009), the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Music (2011), the KykNet Fiesta (2012) and the Contemporary Music Prize at the Cleveland International Piano Competition (USA, 2013). In 2016, he was awarded the Huberte Rupert Prize of the South African Academy of Arts and Sciences for his contribution to music in his native country.

He has given solo, chamber music and concerto performances throughout Europe, Canada, the USA and South Africa in such prestigious concert halls as the Wigmore, Barbican, Cadogan and Queen Elizabeth Halls (London), the Konzerthaus (Berlin), the Gulbenkian Auditorium (Lisbon), Teatro del Giglio in Lucca, the Cape Town City Hall and the Romanian Athenaeum (Bucharest). He has recently appeared as soloist in Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand and Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 1 with the Guildhall Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Hall (London). His critically-acclaimed renditions of Liszt’s Piano Concertos No. 1 and 2 with the CPO are frequently broadcast on South African national television. He has collaborated with numerous conductors, including Nicholas Cleobury, Carlos Izcaray, James Judd, Gérard Korsten, Theodore Kuchar, Diego Masson, En Shao, Yasuo Shinozaki and Conrad van Alphen.

In collaboration with his duo partner, cellist Anzél Gerber, Ben was awarded the first prize in the Ibla Grand Prize Competition (Italy). The duo performed at Carnegie Hall (New York) and has received the gold medal in the Global Music Awards for their recording of music by Anton Rubinstein.

Ben studied at the University of Pretoria, the International Piano Academy (Imola), the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole. His teachers include Michel Dalberto, Louis Lortie, Ronan O’Hora, Boris Petrushansky, Joseph Stanford and Eliso Virsaladze. In 2016 he obtained a doctorate in music from City, University of London and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. His solo album, featuring works of Franz Liszt, has been released by TwoPianists Records and is distributed worldwide through Naxos Global. He is a Steinway Artist.

PROGRAMME:

Johann Sebastian Bach/Ferruccio Busoni
Ich ruf zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ (BV B 27/5)

Robert Schumann
Kreisleriana, Op. 16

Zoltán Kodály
Dances of Marosszék (1927)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsk, transcr. Mikhail Pletnev
Concert Suite from 'The Nutcracker', Op. 71 

Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sonata No. 2 in B flat-minor, Op. 36 (1931 version)

ADMISSION

  • R130 (adults)
  • *R90 (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)

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