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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
People are living there

Director: Karabelo Lekalake

Writer:  Athol Fugard
Venue: Scaena Theatre

Dates & times:

21 May at 19:30

22 May at 19:30

23 May at 19:30

24 May at 19:30

R 30.00 per person & R 20.00 per person (students, scholars & pensioners)

Bookings:   Computicket (Mimosa Mall en Checkers)

People Are Living There is a milestone play in Fugard’s career as a major South African playwright. Contrary to the believe that Fugard’s plays are racially driven, this two-act play allows the audience to reflect and search for a true meaning of life. Like many of his staged works, People Are Living There maintains a unity of time and space.  In the play, Fugard presents a sad, Milly, Don, Shorty and Sissy, who’s daily lives are grains of sand that will never have shape or meaning.

Set in a Johannesburg boarding house in 1989, People Are Living There revolves around a landlady Milly, whose 10 year romantic relationship with one of her boarders has just come to a messy abrupt end. With a good deal of bitter comedy, Milly, Don and Shorty organize a party which is meant to convince Ahlers (her ex-lover) that she is neither downcast, heartbroken nor defeated by their break-up. The party these three arrange is a pathetic, tragic and a comic experience.

The irony of life takes centre stage in this play especially through Fugard’s silkworm’s life span metaphor juxtaposed to the life of human-beings.  The play effortlessly echoes these words, “time waits for no men”. Although there is a bleak melancholy shadow over everything that happens in this play, Fugard still gives the audience opportunity to laugh.

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