Gold Coast 2012-13 SEASON FINALE on May 11 at 7:30

Gold Coast Chamber Players, voted the BEST CHAMBER GROUP OF THE EAST BAY by the Contra Costa Times, is performing to packed audiences since they opened their 2012-13 season.

GCCP provides a unique and inspiring listening experience for audiences of all musical backgrounds. Concerts feature repertoire ranging from classical to contemporary, and performers are drawn from the most prestigious orchestras in the San Francisco Bay Area, the United States, and music capitols from around the world. For… Show more more details, please visit their website, www.gcplayers.org.

In programming the epic work, Quartet for the End of Time for the Gold Coast Chamber Players season finale on May 11 at 7:30pm, it seemed to Artistic Director, Pamela Freund-Striplen, that audiences would benefit from a deep exploration of the piece. Therefore, she invited author Rebecca Rischin to discuss her book, “For the End of Time: The Story of the Messiaen quartet”. Ms. Rischin lovingly brings to life the musicians who gave the priemer and provides fascinating context for understanding the work. With Ms. Rischin’s lecture as a first half, a performance provides a second half to this program.

Performers include cellist Christopher Costanza from the St. Lawrence String Quartet, who, as a student, studied the piece with Messiaen himself. Joining him will be two key members of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, violinist Kay Stern (concertmaster) and clarinetist Tony Striplen. Each musician brings a sensitivity and broad spectrum of color to the performance. Pianist Yana Reznik, who commanded a standing ovation at her Gold Coast debut last January, rounds out this all-star cast.

The most ethereally beautiful music of the twentieth century was first heard on a brutally cold January night in 1941, at the Stalag VIIIA prisoner-of-war camp, in Görlitz, Germany. The composer was Olivier Messiaen, the work “Quartet for the End of Time.” Messiaen wrote most of it after being captured as a French soldier during the German invasion of 1940.

"There shall be time no longer.” How did Messiaen understand this eerie phrase? First, it had for him a precise musical meaning. By 1941, this composer no longer wanted to hear time being beaten out by a drum—one, two, three, four; he had had enough of that in the war. Instead, he devised rhythms that expanded, contracted, stopped in their tracks, and rolled back in symmetrical patterns. Such music is heavenly to analyze but devilishly difficult to play. In the end, Messiaen’s apocalypse has little to do with history and catastrophe; instead, it records the rebirth of an ordinary soul in the grip of extraordinary emotion. Which is why the Quartet is as overpowering now as it was on that frigid night in 1941.

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