E06 Octandre. Quartet For The End Of Time

Little Missenden Festival: 4 - 13th October, 2024 [https://www.little-missenden.org/]

Octandre Ensemble: Quartet for the End of Time

Jonathan Hargreaves conductor , Francesca Barritt violin , Corentin Chassard cello , Audrey Milhères flute , Adam Slater clarinet/bass clarinet , Joseph Houston piano

Kaija Saariaho: Mirrors (for flute and cello); Oi Kuu (for bass clarinet and cello) Richard Causton: Phoenix (for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano) Christian Mason: Figures in a Landscape (Awaiting Eternity) - UK premiere Olivier Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time

Quartet for the End of Time was first performed in 1941 in a German prisoner of war camp, with three other inmates playing violin, cello and clarinet and Messiaen himself at the piano. The work’s title was taken from Revelation: “And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever ... that there should be time no longer.”

Kaija Saariaho spent her life experimenting with sound, particularly its timbre and the way it can vary across and between different instruments. In both Mirrors and Oi Kuu the instrumentalists play about with rhythm, pitch and colouration, trying to establish common ground between themselves.

Richard Causton’s Phoenix suite was premiered at Little Missenden in 2006. It’s a series of interlinked sections – by turns elegiac, capricious, radiant and menacing – all vaguely otherworldly and evoking the many aspects of the mythical bird.

Christian Mason’s Figures in a Landscape has been written as a companion piece to Messiaen’s Quartet and this will be its UK premiere.

The Octandre Ensemble was formed in 2011 by composer Christian Mason and conductor Jon Hargreaves. Their core repertoire is music written after 1945, with an emphasis on timbre and ritual: “Sound is an eternally fascinating phenomenon, and music can harness its power in ever more original ways: new music, ancient ideas.” In recent years, their activity has centred on long-term relationships with living composers such as Frank Denyer, Jack Sheen and Sinan Savaskan. Previous festival appearances include two here at Little Missenden – performances of Stravinsky’s L’histoire du Soldat in 2014 and Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire with Lore Lixenberg in 2016.

octandre.com [//octandre.com]

More information on our website [https://www.little-missenden.org/2024-programme/octandre.html]