IDIOMELO ENSEMBLE

Programme

Programme July 27th

Olivier Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time

Programme July 28th

Beethoven: Piano Trio in G Major, Op. 1, No. 2  / Brahms: Trio for piano, clarinet and cello in A minor, Op 114

About this event

The Quartet for the End of Time has become one of the most famous moral references to the horror of war in recent times. Composed in 1940 by Olivier Messiaen in the Stalag VIII-A prisoner-of-war camp at Görlitz, east of Dresden, the quartet is scored for an unusual combination of instruments – piano, violin, cello and clarinet – what was available in the camp. It is a deeply moving work, taking its inspiration from the passage in the Revelation in which an angel descends from Heaven robed in a cloud and with a rainbow over his head, one foot on the sea and the other on land. The angel announces that “there should be time no longer” (Revelation 10: 1-7). Messiaen’s quartet was first performed in the prison camp where it had been composed – in the open air on an icy afternoon in January 1941.