Messiaen: The End of Time
to
L'Auditori Lepant 150, 08013 Barcelona
Image courtesy of L'Auditori
The Sitkovetsky Trio and clarinetist Andreas Ottensamer will perform Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time) (1941), which is inspired by a passage from the Apocalypse of St. John. This is one of the most impressive pieces of chamber music of the 20th century, especially considering that Olivier Messiaen composed it in a Nazi concentration camp. He met three other prisoners who were musicians; a clarinetist, a cellist and a violinist. This was the reason behind the rather unusual chamber ensemble. They premiered the work in front of a group of prisoners. “Never had I been listened to with so much attention and understanding,” said the composer. With death approaching, the power of music intensifies.
Maurice Ravel’s Piano Trio in A Minor (1914) is the last work that Ravel composed before becoming an ambulance driver for the French army. Ravel masterfully combines his obsession with formal perfection with his interest in the popular Basque tradition that he had nurtured since he was a child. The movement uses irregular rhythms similar to those of the zortziko dance rhythm and the third movement uses the form of the passacaille.
Program
- Maurice Ravel: Piano Trio in A minor (1914) 27′
- Olivier Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time (1941) 47′
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