In two short decades, three very different French composers produced three very different masterpieces. Messiaen’s dramatic yet ultimately comforting vision of the end of time; Fauré’s late Trio, powerful in its lyricism and formal beauty, and Ravel’s tensile, balletic sonata.

FAURE Piano Trio Op.120 in D minor (1922-23)

RAVEL Sonata for violin & cello (1920-22)

MESSIAEN Quartet for the End of Time (1940-41)

David Griffiths, clarinet; Dimity Hall, violin; Julian Smiles, cello; with guest artist Andrea Lam

In 1941, on a freezing winter night in Stalag VIIIA, Olivier Messiaen presented his Quartet for the End of Time. The audience and musicians were prisoners of war, their instruments in disrepair, but Messiaen’s meditation on the songs of birds and angels, the overwhelming sounds and colours of the apocalypse, and the deep and comforting beauty that emerges from it, changed the course of 20^th century music.

Gabriel Fauré, ‘cher maitre’ to generations of French musicians and an organist like Messiaen, bade farewell to his compositional career with chamber music masterworks like his Piano Trio, poised and elegant music of seemingly endless lyricism cast in sumptuous scoring and harmony. This performance features clarinet rather than violin, restoring the composer’s original plan.
Fauré’s student Maurice Ravel produced his Sonata for violin and cello at around the same time, a work of amazing economy and breathtaking invention that is utterly thrilling in performance.