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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 RHAPSODIC ORGAN

with Gerrit Jordaan

7 June 2018

Odeion

19:30

Gerrit Jordaan studied organ under the guidance of Stephan Zondagh (pupil of Marcel Dupré and Nadia Boulanger), Wim Viljoen (pupil of Marie Claire Alain) and Daleen Kruger (pupil of Jean Claude Zender). In 2007 he completed a DMus with a dissertation on Stefans Grové's Afrika Hymnus II. This Hymnus was dedicated to Gerrit – as it was conceived in a dream wherein the composer heard him playing this work.

Since his student days, Gerrit has been involved with South African organ music, commissioning and performing new works – of which some had been dedicated to him - writing articles on this repertoire, working towards performances with the insight of the composers, recording this repertoire, typesetting and adapting instrumental works to the organ. As an enthusiast of South African music, he presented recitals in Europe as well as Finland and Canada. In 2016 he was invited to play the final recital at the Klangzeit Festival for contemporary music in Münster (Germany). Some of his articles were published internationally in Het Orgel, Organ – Journal für die Orgel, Orgue Nouvelles as well as in local academic publications. He wrote reports on the Stylus Phantasticus in the Praeludia of Buxtehude and on the Choral Preludes of Brahms. He studied historical performance practice of standard repertoire in numerous masterclasses at UNISA Organ Simposia, Haarlem Summer Academia and in Pistoia from organists including Luigi Tagliavini, Harald Vogel, Ludger Lohmann, Bernard Lagacé, Wolfgang Zerer, Olivier Latry, Marie Claire Alain and Szigmund Zsathmary. Until recently, Gerrit was chair of the Church Organist Committee of Southern Africa (SAKOV). He compiled three volumes of original Southern African choral preludes and choir pieces for SAKOV. He is a member of VONKK – a committee that develops new Afrikaans church music – creating new songs, providing organ, choir and instrumental arrangements to this growing repertoire.

PROGRAMME:

  • Johann Sebastian Bach: Prelude and Fugue in G major (BWV 541)
  • Jacobus Kloppers: Celtic Impressions (2003/4) - Two Strathspeys, Two Airs, Two Jigs, Toccata on two marching songs
  • Surendran Reddy: Toccata for Madiba (ca. 8:00)
  • Antalffy-Zsiross Dezso: Sketches on Negro Spiritual Songs (ca. 7’00)
  • George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue (organ transription: Tobias Zuleger)

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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