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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
Ek, Anna van Wyk (AFR)

Title of Production:  Ek, Anna van Wyk

Language:  Afrikaans

Genre:  Drama

Directed by:  Nico Luwes

Written by:  Pieter Fourie

Featuring:  Final year drama students

Venue:  Wynand Mouton Theatre

Dates & times:

28 May at 19:30

29 May at 19:30

30 May at 19:30

Prices:  R 40.00 for adults / R 30.00 for students or scholars / R 25.00 for pensioners or for groups of 10 or more

Bookings:   Computicket (0861 915 8000)

Press Release

The play, "Ek, Anna van Wyk", by Hertzog prize-winner in 2003, Pieter Fourie, is performed by a multicultural third year cast of the UFS Drama Department students under the direction of Prof Nico Luwes in the Wynand Mouton Theatre from 28 to 30 May 2014.

“Anna” is an Afrikaans play about the disintegration of a marriage and a woman caught up in the patriarchal and Apartheid systems. In this haunting exploration of the Afrikaner psyche, the older members of the Terre’Blanche family are stuck in poisonous political dogma and traditions. In contrast, Anna and her husband, represent the young Afrikaner who shed the Apartheid dogma and desperately try to better the lives of their farm workers. The play deals with the rebellious Anna who challenges their misuse of power and the corruption of Christianity for own gain. Senior, the family patriarch, opposes his daughter- in-law, Anna, after it becomes obvious that she is an epileptic. Not fit as ‘breeding stock’ for the Terre’Blanche family she is replaced by a younger woman. In this heart-rending play she must sacrifice that and those who are dearest to her – her husband, her child, her status and herself. Fresh from a mental institution and rehabilitation from alcohol addiction, Anna struggles through the pains of rediscovering her lost identity and believes in what is right and what is wrong. In the final scene Anna apparently murders Senior, but the Voice in the auditorium assures the audience that he died of a heart attack earlier. But is this true? Depicting Anna as Senior’s victim and as a victim of the values embedded in the society he represents, raises the audience’s sympathy for her and diminishes the patriarch’s stature.

The plight of the farm workers plays an important part in the play. Taking into account the recent uprising of farm workers in the De Doorns district, it becomes clear that very little has changed since 1986 when the play was first performed and the country was on the brink of a civil war. Fourie has written a play that can be seen as a dramatic historical document of the 1980’s, but it’s relevance for the present political climate in the country cannot be denied.

Definitely a play that must be seen.

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