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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
Free State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alexander Fokkens

Soloists : Samson Diamond Farida Bacharova (violins)

Dates : Thursday 12 March

Venue : Odeion

Time : 19:30

 

On Thursday 12 March the Free State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alexander Fokkens will perform in the Odeion. The violinists Farida Bacharova and Samson Diamond will be the soloists with the orchestra in Mozart’’s Concertone for Two Violins and Orchestra and Sarasate’’s exciting Navarra for Two Violins and Orchestra, op. 33. After interval the orchestra will play Beethoven’’s majestic Symphony No. 3 (“"Eroica”").

In 1992, Farida, then the youngest female concertmaster in Russia, was the soloist for more than forty performances of ballets such as The Golden Age, The Nutcraker and Swan Lake in Tokyo’’s Metropolitan Hall. During twelve years of experience performing in Russia and on international tours, she has appeared as a soloist for ballets and as a symphonic soloist in many of the world’’s major halls, including, among others, Fischer Hall and Carnegie Hall in New York, Champs-ÉÉlyséées in Paris, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Berlin’’ Schauspiel Haus, Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Tonhalle in Zurich as well as the Moscow Conservatory Main Hall and Tchaikovsky Hall. A highlight of her orchestral career was a joint-concert with the New York Philharmonic, under the baton of Zubin Metha.

Samson was appointed leader of the Odeion String Quartet in 2013. He got his first taste of music in Soweto, where he studied with the founding director of Buskaid, Rosemary Nalden and in the UK with Richard Ireland, Pauline Nobes and Philippe Graffin. As a freelance orchestral player in the UK, Samson played in the Halléé Orchestra, the Academy of St Martins in the Fields, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Manchester Camerata, and the Academy of Ancient Music. He has been heard in concert in prestigious venues such as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Hall in Berlin, Bela Bartok National Concert Hall in Budapest, and the Musikverein in Vienna, with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields conducted by Sir Neville Marriner.

Tickets for the concert in the Odeion are available from Computicket outlets or book online at www.computicket.com.

Admission:

R130 (adults)

R100 (pensioners)

R50 (students/learners/group bookings of 10+)

Enquiries:

Ella Kotze (FSSO), tel. (051) 401-2342 (office hours)

www.fsso.org.za

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