COC Free Concert - Season Launch - Quartet for the End of Time September 18, 2007

Artists of the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra and The Glenn Gould School
Marie Bérard, violin
Justin Johnston, clarinet
Paul Widner, cello
Benjamin Cruchley, piano
present

Quartet for the End of Time
“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 for ever 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.” REVELATION, X

Inspired by the Revelation of St. John and written while the composer was incarcerated in a German POW camp during the Second World War, Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du Temps is one of the great inspirational stories of twentieth-century music: a masterpiece created under the most dire circumstances, an affirmation of life in the face of the century’s bleakest horrors. The premiere took place in January, 1941 with the composer at an (out of tune) upright piano and three fellow inmates before an audience of prisoners and prison guards in the unheated barracks of Stalag 8A at Gorlitz.

Transcending the concept of time and inviting the listener to contemplate eternity, the performance of this masterwork is a fitting tribute to Messiaen in the season of his centenary.

Official Website: http://www.coc.ca/performances/concerts.html