Years
2019 2018
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
Piet Koornhof – Violin Recital

with Nicol Viljoen (piano)
Thursday, 25 October
Odeion
19:30

Violinist, Piet Koornhof, is well known in South Africa and has also performed in Europe, Israel, the USA, Russia, Singapore and New Zealand. He is founder member of both the Potch Trio and the South African Chamber Music Society. His teachers include Susan Sauerman, Alan Solomon (South Africa) and Dorothy DeLay (Juilliard School of Music - New York). He also studied at the Aspen School of Music (Colorado) where he received master classes from Pinchas Zukerman, Itzhak Perlman and Sergiu Luca. He received his M.Mus. and D.Mus. degrees from the University of North West and is currently associate professor at the University of North West.

Nicol Viljoen, associate professor and Head of the Odeion School of Music, is the foremost expert of Schenkerian analysis in South Africa. His exceptionally versatile activities as music theorist, concert pianist, chamber musician, jazz pianist and academic have greatly contributed to an inclusive vision of music study at the UFS. During 2003 Nicol produced the compact disc Franz Schubert/Johannes Brahms (Unfoldings UCD001) together with the violist John Wille. In 2011 he produced his second compact disc, Transcendental Schubert, on the Mukavi label.

Programme:
Mozart – Sonata in B-flat major, K.454
Beethoven – Sonata No. 10 in G major, Op. 96
Brahms – Sonata in A major, Op. 100

Admission:
R100 (adults), R60 (pensioners, students and learners)
R40 (group bookings of 10+)
Tickets available at Computicket.

Enquiries:
Ninette Pretorius (tel. 051 401 2504)
 

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