NOSPR in Chamber Mode / Mendelssohn-Bartholdy & Messiaen - NOSPR

Whenever Mendelssohn’s Trio in C minor is mentioned, a melomaniac’s imagination recalls the first bars of the 1845 Op. 66. However, there is also another trio, nearly a quarter of a century earlier, written by the 11-year-old composer for an atypical ensemble, replacing the cello with the viola. Messiaen’s piece is one for an unusual ensemble as well, yet here the origin of the idea lay not in a boyish tendency to experiments, but in the constraints of a particular moment. The Quatuor pour la fin du temps was created for a group of fellow prisoner friends in a POW camp and was first performed in a rain-drenched barrack of the Görlitz Stalag. Time is a relative concept: sometimes it heralds a new talent, as it does in Mendelssohn’s piece. Sometimes, it helps to stop and turn away from the madness of war, as it does in Messiaen’s masterpiece.

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Duration of the concert: approx. 70 minutes