Pablo Barragan | Sitkovetsky Trio

The music of the impressionist sound magicians Debussy and Ravel shimmers in all the colors of the rainbow. Just like the music of Olivier Messiaen some 30 years later, whose "Quartet for the End of Time" was composed under extremely dramatic circumstances.

Messiaen composed it as a prisoner of war in the Second World War: written for the instruments that were available to him there, the meager washrooms as rehearsal rooms and a prison camp in Görlitz as the place of the premiere, at which the composer himself sat at the piano. The music is as powerful as the Revelation of John, from which the composer drew inspiration for his work: the proverbial trumpets of the Apocalypse meet sounds of ethereal tenderness and the birdcalls so typical of Messiaen.