| Date and venue | Title | Submitted by |
|---|---|---|
| 10-May-2013 Southbank Centre: Queen Elizabeth Hall | Quartet for the End of Time at Queen Elizabeth Hall | Frances Wilson |
 The fascinating Rest is Noise festival at Southbank Centre has now reached its mid-point, with the focus on music created out of oppression and war. In Friday night’s chamber concert at Queen Elizabeth Hall two pieces written in the most straitened circumstances during the Second World War were presented: Shostakovich’s Second Piano Trio, a haunting lament for the tragic victims of the war and conflict in general, and Messiaen’s extraordinary Quatuor pour la fin du temps (“Quartet for the End of Time”), composed and premièred in a German prisoner of war camp.Read full review... | ||
| 20-Apr-2013 92nd Street Y, Lexington Avenue at 92nd | Modernist Mozart at the end of time: Tetzlaff at 92Y | David Allen, unpredictableinevitability.com |
 It’s easiest to describe Christian Tetzlaff’s approach to playing the violin by what he isn’t trying to do. He is not trying to play as beautifully as possible, in the conventional sense. He is not trying to sound like a nightingale, soaring long, honeyed lines above an accompaniment. He is not, in other words, trying to make his violin sound as the mind’s ear instinctively thinks it should. That is too easy, after all, and it inhibits a truer sense of expression.Read full review... | ||
| 7-Dec-2012 Elgar Concert Hall | A moving vision of the end of time with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group | Peter Marks |
 The works featured in this concert, composed in 1912 and 1941, might be considered rather old fare for Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, but they remain as startlingly original today as they must have seemed back then. It was a pleasure to hear them in the brand new Elgar Concert Hall at the University of Birmingham in all its shiny, wooden splendour.
Read full review... | ||
| 17-Jul-2012 City Recital Hall Angel Place | Australian Chamber Orchestra soloists play music by Schubert and Messiaen | Oliver Brett |
 Pairing together Schubert and Messiaen at first glance may appear slightly far-fetched. However, there are more similarities between the two composers, and indeed the two pieces in this evening’s program, than one might at first realise. Schubert and Messiaen were in many ways both experimental composers, especially the latter. Olivier Messiaen was heavily influenced by birdsong and his Roman Catholic faith and pushed the boundaries of tonal possibilities.Read full review... | ||
| 29-May-2012 Institut Français (French Institute) | Quartet for the End of Time: Mercury Quartet at the French Institute | Arthur Keegan-Bole |
 Not being a French national and having only just heard about their excellent series of Tuesday night concerts, this was my first visit to the Institut Français, Kensington. This was the last in a series of concerts focusing on French music, moving chronologically toward contemporary/modern composers over the course of the series. It was a shame then that only 40 or so people had made the trip to see the Mercury Quartet (a mixed-instrument group who are hot property at the moment, as part of the cool set signed by the wildly proactive Nonclassical record label).
Read full review... | ||
| 29-Apr-2012 Sage: Hall Two | Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time at the Sage Gateshead | Jane Shuttleworth |
 Olivier Messiaen’s extraordinary Quatuor pour la fin du temps was written in a German prisoner of war camp, and first performed in the camp by Messiaen and his fellow prisoners on broken instruments. However, there is a danger that the circumstances of the piece’s creation can distract the listener from Messiaen’s own intentions, for he said that it was not written as a reflection on his own captivity, but as a meditation on a passage from Revelations, the last book of the Bible.Read full review... | ||
