2. Klangbilderkonzert

In the organizer's words:

Olivier Messiaen: Quartet for the end of time

One of the most impressive works by the French composer Olivier Messiaen was written in 1940/41, during his time as a prisoner of war in a labor camp near Görlitz: "Quatuor pour la fin du Temps" (Quartet for the End of Time) - a musical meditation on the Apocalypse of John in eight movements. The instrumentation was based on the forces and instruments available in the camp: a clarinet, a violin, a cello and a broken piano played by Messiaen himself. The premiere took place in January 1941 in the camp's theater barracks. "Never before have people listened to me with such attention and understanding as they did then," Messiaen recalled decades later of that memorable evening. The 2nd Klangbilderkonzert takes place in cooperation with the Jewish Community Lübeck and is part of a diverse accompanying programme to the production of Mieczysław Weinberg's "The Passenger" at Theater Lübeck, an opera that deals with the rupture of civilization at Auschwitz.