Night & The End of Times

The opening concert of our festival takes us into the night. The sun sets in Respighi’s classic Il tramonto for mezzo-soprano and string quartet. Night falls in Vivaldi’s flute concerto La notte. No one has painted the mysterious starry sky more convincingly than the American grandmaster George Crumb. His Nocturnes transport you to another world. Lutoslawski’s Dance Preludes for clarinet and piano echo the notion that night is the setting for exuberant celebrations. In Arnold Schoenberg’s iconic Verklärte Nacht for string sextet, two lovers walk through the moonlit night. She is expecting a child by another man. He forgives her.

In another dimension

In 1940, at the age of 32, Messiaen did his military service as a hospital orderly. He ended up as a prisoner of war in a Polish camp. There he met a clarinetist, violinist and cellist and composed his Quatuor pour la fin du temps. Biblical visions of the end of time inspired him to write a masterpiece with depictions of rainbows, angels, a gorge with birds and a quiet final movement that often leaves the audience in silence for minutes.

As a prelude to the quartet, Natacha Kudritskaya plays a piano piece by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov: ZZ’s Dream. The Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou dreams of ending up as a butterfly in another dimension.

With Daniel Rowland (“Beautiful, intense and hyper-musical” –NRC), Maja Bogdanovic (“lots of character, colour and depth” –NRC), Jelmer de Moed (“A sophisticated performer” – Dutch Classical Talent jury) and Natacha Kudritskaya (“Overwhelming” –Gramophone).