January 26 8:00 PM

Johann Sebastian Bach
  Toccata & Fugue in D minor BWV 565 (1710)
Alban Berg
  Lyric Suite, Movements II, III and VI (1926)
Maurice Ravel
  Mother Goose, piano four hands (1908-10)
Olivier Messiaen
  Quartet for the End of Time (1941) 100th Birthday

Mark Alan Hilt, organ & piano
Denali Quartet
Elissa Johnston, soprano
Gloria Cheng, piano
Sarah Thornblade, violin
Timothy Loo, cello
Donald Foster, clarinet

This evening shares the poignant wartime musical experiences of a soldier who tenaciously guarded his backpack stuffed with miniature scores. The story begins when Messiaen's squadron, which included a gifted clarinetist, marched through France. They stopped at a church where the composer played Bach's most famous organ work. After their capture by German soldiers, Messiaen escaped into the score of Berg's Lyric Suite, a work that absorbed him for hours on end.

Once incarcerated in Stalag VIIIA, another pianist prisoner shared the bench with him at a discarded piano to play Ravel's four hands masterpiece. Out of these experiences and the arrival at the camp of two inspiring French string players, Messiaen composed his most beloved work. It premiered to a stunned audience in sub-freezing weather inside the prisoner of war camp January 15, 1941.