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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
FSSO Symphony Concert: Soldier’s Tale & Van Hunks and the Devil

Free State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alexander Fokkens
Narrators: Tim Thabethe & Marelize Visagie
Friday 11 May 2012
Odeion
19:30

The next concert of the Free State Symphony Orchestra (FSSO) will be an unusual one with seven musicians, a well-known radio personality, a drama student and a conductor on the stage. The programme consists of Stravinsky’s L'histoire du soldat (Soldier’s Tale) and the premiere of Martin Watt’s Van Hunks and the Devil with tongue in the cheek texts by Philip de Vos.

The story of Soldier’s Tale is based on an old Russian folk tale about a soldier who makes a deal with the devil, trading his fiddle for a book that predicts the future. Stravinsky scored the work for only seven players (violin, double bass, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone and percussion) and four speaking parts (the Devil, the Soldier, a Princess and an unseen Reader). The musicians for this production are principal members of the FSSO: Denise Sutton (violin), Peter Guy (double bass), Chrisna Smit (clarinet), Marni van der Westhuizen (bassoon), Paul Loep van Zuilenburg (trumpet), Hendri Liebenberg (trombone) and Ian Roos (percussion). The speaking parts will be narrated by well-known OFM presenter Tim Thabethe and Kovsie drama student Marelize Visagie and the production will be conducted by Alexander Fokkens.

Van Hunks and the Devil is the legend of van Hunks, a retired sea captain and prodigious pipe smoker who lived at the foot of the mountain circa 1700. He was forced by his wife to leave the house whenever he smoked his pipe. One day, while smoking on the slopes of the peak, he met a mysterious stranger who also smoked. They each bragged of how much they smoked and so they fell into a pipe-smoking contest. The stranger turned out to be the Devil and Van Hunks eventually won the contest, but not before the smoke that they had made had covered the mountain, forming the table cloth cloud.

This is the tale of Hans van Hunks and of his friend named Nick;
Of rum and tobacco and things that make one sick.
Four hundred years or so ago: was a time of pomp and show.
Ladies dressed in frills and laces; lots of perfume; painted faces –
Near the mountain by the sea – What a jolly place to be!
The mountain top was flat, flat, flat. Mighty flat – and that was that!

Philip de Vos.


Admission
R120 (adults)
R80 (pensioners)
R50 (students / scholars / groups of 10 and more)

Tickets are available from Computicket (Shoprite / Checkers, Mimosa Mall)
Book online at www.computicket.com

Enquiries:
Ella Kotze (FSSO), tel. (051) 401-2342 (08:00 – 13:00)
www.fsso.org.za
 

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