Messiaen: Quatuor pour la fin du temps

Members of the Concertgebouworkest perform one of the most important works composed during the Second World War. Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps, an impressive spiritual ode to the resilience of man, was written at the Stalag VIII-A labor camp in Poland. It premiered there too: an audience of five thousand French prisoners of war listened breathlessly in the icy cold to the eight-part work for clarinet, piano, violin and cello.