City Pierrot Ensemble: Quartet for the End of Time

The City Pierrot Ensemble's 2019 festival concert features rarely heard French music from the 1930s, preceding Messiaen's profoundly felt, extended quartet for clarinet, violin, cello and piano, written while the composer was interred in the Stalag VIII-A prisoner of war camp, premiered by camp inmates, and coloured by imagery from the Book of Revelation and birdsong.

Programme:

André Jolivet, Aubade for violin and piano (1932)
Florent Schmitt, Chaine brisée, op. 87 for piano (1935-6)
Darius Milhaud, Suite, op. 157b for clarinet, violin and piano (1939)
Olivier Messiaen, Quatour pour la fin du temps (1940-41)

City Pierrot Ensemble:

David Campbell, clarinet
Madeleine Mitchell, violin
Joseph Spooner, cello
Ian Pace, piano

The City Pierrot Ensemble is formed around an outstanding core of musicians working at the Department of Music at City, some of whom played in the earlier ensembles, The Pierrot Players and The Fires of London. The ensemble gave its debut performance in June 2017 with Schoenberg's expressionist masterpiece Pierrot Lunaire (with guest soloists Alwynne Pritchard and Adam de la Cour), alongside the rarely heard theatre piece by Michael Finnissy, Mr Punch, and Roger Redgate's Pierrot on the Stage of Desire. They are resident at the Department, where their subsequent performances have included explorations of the late chamber music of Debussy, Berg, Webern and Zemlinsky.