10pm
Matthew Schellhorn - Piano
James Clark - Violin
Mark van de Wiel - Clarinet
David Cohen - Cello
College Hall
Buy tickets: £10 (or £25 for 3 late-night concerts)
Messiaen - Quatuor pour le fin du temps
One hot summer day in 1940, the German army captured a young French
composer-turned-infantryman as his company marched on the road from
Verdun to Nancy. They interned him into Stalag VIII (near Görlitz in
Silesia) along with his knapsack full of scores of Bach and Berg. There
Messiaen miraculously wrote his Quartet for the End of Time,
one of the most profoundly moving works to emerge from World War II.
"Only Music," he wrote, "made me survive the cruelty and horrors." The Quartet for the End of Time
was performed for the first time in the prison camp, with the composer
at a battered keyboard-and the temperature at minus 22oc. By incredible
fortune, a celebrated violinist, clarinettist, and cellist were
prisoners in the same camp (the first two had kept their instruments
and the cellist found a cello, with a missing string). Five thousand
fellow sufferers sat through the quartet's ‘world premiere'. "...Never
was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension" the
composer remarked of his audience.
www.matthewschellhorn.com
