Music
Quartet for the End of Time
Concert Hall, Glasgow University
Michael Tumelty
four stars
SATURDAY night’s performance of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, played by members of McOpera, was shifted from Glasgow University Chapel to the concert hall because of a burst pipe: a good thing, because the decent-sized-sized crowd that turned out on one of the filthiest nights of this drookit winter was warmer.
I hope that anyone hearing the eight-movement work for the first time got something out of it: the quartet is a tough, visionary piece, using musical techniques and language that belong exclusively to Messiaen: he was unique. And the fine, if rather swift, performance given on Saturday by violinist Anthony Moffat, cellist Sarah Harrington, clarinettist Nicholas Ross and pianist Scott Mitchell, underlined the mysterious cohesiveness that integrates a work which uses elements from different areas of the composer’s development, different combinations of the four instruments, and different sound worlds ranging from fury to ecstasy.
In their performance, I don’t think the group quite got the opening Liturgies out of Time: it was a bit too meter-bound. The rhythmic explosions of the Vocalise were well-captured, and the parallel passages in the seventh movement, Chaos of Rainbows, were stunningly-structured in their organic growth towards the ecstasy underpinning the music. Nicholas Ross’s Abyss of the Birds could have been more spacious and Sarah Harrington’s Praise, murderously-difficult to sustain, slipped on a few phrases, though she was fantastically-playful in the entertaining Intermezzo.
In the awesome Dance of Fury, the group let the power-drive slip a bit, but ultimately, Anthony Moffat’s transcendent Praise stopped Time and took the music to the stars: even the hellish rain quit its assault.
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