Review | Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet For the End of Time - Hong Kong musicians overcome initial hesitancy to give commendable performance
- Despite a typhoon warning and a red rainstorm alert, the Hong Kong quartet displayed moments of brilliance at the University of Hong Kong’s Grand Hall
- Early discrepancies in coordination aside, Messiaen’s dynamic extremities were well realised and compellingly executed
“Never had I been listened to with such rapt attention and understanding,” recalled French composer Olivier Messiaen, decades after the 1941 premiere of his Quartet For the End of Time (Quatour pour la fin du Temps). His audience was some 400 fellow war prisoners captured in Germany.
Eighty years on, a rapt audience in Hong Kong witnessed a rare airing of this mesmerising Quartet at the University of Hong Kong’s Grand Hall on Hong Kong Island – as a typhoon raged on outside.
These were difficulties that the Hong Kong quartet, featuring violinist Kitty Cheung Man-yui, cellist Eric Yip Chun-hei, clarinettist Linus Fung Yat-shan, and pianist Nancy Loo, had to grapple with last Friday.
The ethereal middle section of Vocalise, for the Angel Who Announces the End of Time – one of the eight movements born of Messiaen’s deep-rooted Christian faith – was played with haunting beauty by the muted violin and cello.