Sitkovetsky Trio / Pablo Barragán

By the time he completed and gave the first performance of the »Quatuor pour la fin du temps«, as it is known in the original, in the Görlitz prisoner-of-war camp in 1941, the French composer had already spent many months in captivity. The piece’s unusual combination of instruments is simply a reflection of who was incarcerated with Messiaen and what instruments they could play; Messiaen himself took the piano part. Today, the quartet is acknowledged as one of the central chamber-music works of the 20th century. Marked through and through by the composer’s deep Catholic faith, the music is closely linked to the book of Revelations in the Bible. Messiaen himself described the work in these words: »The motifs bring the listener closer to eternity. Special rhythms without any conventional metre push the dimension of time into the distance. The quartet has eight movements. Why? Seven is the consummate number. God spent six days creating the world, sanctified by the divine Sabbath; the seventh day expands into eternity and becomes the eighth day of inextinguishable light and everlasting peace.« Surrounded by the horrors of the Second World War, Messiaen’s faith enabled him not to lose hope.

French works – a duo and a trio – are also under the spotlight before the interval: Claude Debussy’s »Première Rhapsodie« for piano and clarinet follows Maurice Ravel’s only piano trio, written in 1914 while he was staying in the Basque region. In addition to local Basque influence, the composer also incorporated echoes of Malaysian music into the work, reflecting the fashion around the turn of the century forte »exotic«.The score also shows how Ravel was horrified by the outbreak of the First World War. He wrote to a friend: »The alarms bells have been ringing for two days, everywhere women are weeping, and worst of all is the excruciating enthusiasm amongst young people!«.