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)


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Stefan Temmingh (recorder) and Axel Wolf (lute) in “The Brocken Melody”

Thursday, 28 February 2013 

Odeion

19:30

Stefan Temmingh is part of the young generation of world-class recorder players. About his debut CD “Corelli à la mode” an Italian reviewer wrote: “Never before did recorder playing sound so effortless and so differentiated in terms of timbre and dynamics.”  - Corriere della Sera (Milano).   Published by the German label Oehms Classics, the recording was celebrated by the international music press in 2009.  His second CD “The Gentleman’s Flute” was immediately nominated for the International Classical Music Awards 2011 (formerly MIDEM Awards).  Since then Stefan is regularly compared to the legendary Frans Brüggen.  Stefan comes from a Dutch-South-African family of musicians. He was born in 1978 (Cape Town) and now lives in Munich.  There he studied with Markus Zahnhausen as well as with Prof. Michael Schneider (Frankfurt). As a specialist in Early Music performance, his repertoire comprises the complete Baroque literature for recorder.  As a soloist he regularly performs with orchestras such as the Folkwang Chamber Orchestra Essen, the Hofkapelle Muenchen, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and at the Ludwigsburg Festival. He has participated in recordings for Harmonia Mundi, Oehms Classics, Christophorus Records, the Southwest German and the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporations.  His commitment ranges from Baroque to Modern music. One of his strongest desires is to extend the boundaries of the recorder repertoire and he succeeds to surpass the usual stereotypes concerning his instrument.   In 2008 he was awarded the Contemporary Music Scholarship of the City of Munich.  Since 2010 he has a lectureship at the Munich College of Music.

Axel Wolf is a freelance musician who lives in Bavaria (Germany). He travels to international festivals in Bruges, Utrecht, Edinburgh, Tokyo and New York, both as a soloist or member of ensembles including Musica Fiata (Cologne), the Freiburger Barockorchester, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and The English Concert.  He has been a regular guest at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, performing under the direction of Ivor Bolton, Harry Bicket and Christopher Moulds.  He completed his guitar and lute studies with Hans Michael Koch and continued it with Rolf Lislevand.  He has worked with conductors such as Peter Schreier, Enoch zu Guttenberg, Alan Curtis, Paul McCreesh and Joshua Rifkin in opera, concert and CD productions.  He was a lecturer at the Academy of Music and Theater Hanover (1986 - 2003).  In addition to numerous CD productions as a continuo player and accompanist, he has released solo recordings of the lute works of Johann Sebastian Bach, “Opera for Lute”.

PROGRAMME:

(The Brocken Melody - The fascinating art of Renaissance and Baroque variation): Works by Corelli, Ortiz, De Rippe, Dowland, Schop, Van Eyck as well as the ever popular Greensleeves.

ADMISSION:

R130 (adults), R90 (pensioners, students and learners)

Tickets available at Computicket.

ENQUIRIES:   

Ninette Pretorius (tel. 051 401 2504)

OSM MASTER CLASS SERIES 2013:

Stefan Temmingh will present master classes to three candidates on the day of the concert (Thursday, 28 February 2013) from 11:00 – 13:00 on the Odeion stage.  Come and see the master at work!

Admission: R50 per person

 

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