YCAT x ANAM Quartet for the End of Time

Alumni of London’s Young Classical Artists Trust join current musicians from the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) for a program that reaches for the biggest things there are: the depths of the ocean, the peaks of mountain ranges, and time itself.

George Crumb’s Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale) , inspired by the songs of humpback whales, uses flute, cello and piano to conjure the sounds of the deep. While Alberto Ginastera’s Impresiones de la Puna , written when he was still a teenager, takes listeners to the high Andean plateau known as the Puna, with a movement named for the quena, the bamboo flute of the Andes, and a closing dance of syncopated rhythm.

Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time , written in a German prisoner-of-war camp, was first performed there in January 1941 for an audience of fellow prisoners. Inspired by the Book of Revelation, its eight movements travel from birdsong at dawn to a slow, final ascent that seems to leave time behind. The story behind it is one of the most extraordinary in all of music, and the music lives up to it.