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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Leslie Howard piano recital

Thursday, 8 August 2013
Odeion
19:30

(pay only R140 for a season ticket of two concerts: 
Leslie Howard performing with the Odeion String Quartet on 7 August and Leslie Howard piano recital on 8 August)

Annual re-engagements on five continents and a 130-CD discography attest to the burgeoning popularity of Leslie Howard.  Leslie is renowned world wide as a concert pianist, composer, conductor, chamber musician and scholar.  He is citizen of both Britain and Australia – he was born in Melbourne, but has been resident in London since 1972.  Leslie has earned an extraordinary claim to immortality, having accomplished a feat unequalled by any solo artist in recording history – his 97-CD survey (for Hyperion) of the complete piano music of Franz Liszt.  It encompasses 300+ world premières, including works prepared by Howard from Liszt’s still unpublished manuscripts, and works unheard since Liszt’s lifetime.  This monumental project merited his entry into the Guinness Book of World Records, six Grands Priz du Disque, the Medal of St. Stephen, the Pro Cultura Hungarica award and a mounted bronze cast of Liszt’s hand.  At an ceremony at Buckingham Palace, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II bestowed on Leslie “Member of the Order of Australia” for his service to the arts as piano soloist, composer, musicologist and mentor of young musicians. 

Howard’s performances of chamber music and lieder include collaboration with some of the greatest artists of our time, including the Amadeus, Britten and Endellion String Quartets as well as Salvatore Accardo, Augustin Dumay, Erick Friedman, Ani Kavafian, Benny Goodman, Charles Neidich, Steven Isserlis, Nathaniel Rosen, Torlief Thedeen, Geoffrey Parsons, Sir Thomas Allen, Yvonne Kenny and Dame Felicity Lott. He has been a featured artist at many international music festivals, including the American festivals of Santa Fe, Newport, La Jolla, Palm Beach and Seattle, and at such European festivals as Brescia-Bergamo, Como, Edinburgh, Schleswig-Holstein, Bath, Camden, Cheltenham, Warwick and Wexford.

His discography includes many world première recordings, such as the four Piano Sonatas of Anton Rubenstein, the second and third Piano Sonatas of Tchaikovsky, a 2-disc survey of Glazunov’s piano music, and a 3-disc collection of Percy Grainger’s piano works. 

Program:

Beethoven:      
Sonata No. 13 in E-flat major, Op. 27 No. 1
Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27  No. 2 “Moonlight”

Schubert:
Fantasy in C major, D760 “Wanderer”

Liszt:
Sonata, S178

Admission:
R100 (adults), R80 (pensioners), R50 (students and learners), R50 (group booking of 10+)

Tickets available at Computicket.

Enquiries:      
Ninette Pretorius (tel. 051 401 2504)

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