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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
Concerto for an African cellist (World Première)
 
 

-  An exceptional collaboration stretched over three continents -

19 March 2013

Odeion

19:30

featuring

Heleen du Plessis – cello

Malcolm Nay – piano

Magdalena de Vries – marimba

OSM Camerata directed by Hans Huyssen

The renowned South African cellist Heleen du Plessis (currently Williams Evans Executant lecturer for cello at the Music Department of the University of Otaga, New Zealand) is the initiator of a project with the title Cello for Africa. The project is a practical investigation of new cello repertoire with a specific focus on the instrument’s suitainability and potential role in music of hybrid styles, resulting from contemporary reflections on South Africa’s diverse musical cultures.  Envisaged as a series of performances in New Zealand and South Africa with ensuing a CD recording – she wishes to present and advocate South African compositions for cello in her current professional environment in New Zealand. Simultaneously it amounts to a reflection on the thrust of her career as an international cellist, with a strong prevailing awareness of her African roots and a definite urge to convey this sentiment and its energy by means of her unique performance style. On 19 March 2013 the Odeion School of Music (OSM) presents a concert with a varied but carefully combined programme of early and contemporary orchestral and chamber music.

Heleen has requested several new South African works for cello, two of which will be premièred on this occasion: she will be the soloist in Hans Huyssen’s Concerto for an African Cellist (with the OSM Camerata, directed by the composer).  Given his specific interest in indigenous African music, the SAMRO Foundation has granted Du Plessis' request to commission Hans Huyssen to this task.  Together with Magdalena de Vries, she will première Peter Klatzow’s A Sense of Place for marimba and cello.  Commemorating the 100th birthday of Benjamin Britten (1913 – 1976) the programme furthermore includes his beautiful Sonata for Cello and Piano Op. 65, for which Malcom Nay joins Du Plessis. 

Cellist Heleen du Plessis

http://heleenduplessis.com/

Odeion School of Music Camerata (UFS) directed by Hans Huyssen

http://www.huyssen.de/

Admission:

R110 (adults), R70 (pensioners), R40 (students and learners)

Tickets available at Computicket or at the door

Enquiries:   

Ninette Pretorius (tel. 051 401 2504)

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