Historic Quartet

OU spotlights piece premiered in
German prisoner-of-war camp.

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Suzanne Chessler

Special to the Jewish News

A

one-piece concert and the
dramatic background of
the piece make up pre-
sentations planned by the Oakland
University Department of Music,
Theatre and Dance.
Quartet for the End of Time, com-
posed by Oliver Messiaen while he
was interred in a German prison
camp during World War II and per-
formed by prisoners, will be played
Saturday evening, March 13, in
Varner Recital Hall, where a discus-
sion of the work will precede the
music.
Rebecca Rischin, a clarinetist and
professor at Ohio University, has
written about the piece and will join
the pre-concert discussion. The day
before, she will lecture and sign cop-
ies of her book, For the End of Time,
The Story of the Messiaen Quartet
(Cornell University Press; $21.95), at
4 p.m. in Varner Recital Hall.
"The piece originally was the topic
of my doctoral dissertation at Florida
State University:' says Rischin, 42,
who has performed the work at
Eastern Michigan University. "My
book mainly is on the history.
"The piece is very long, sort of a
marathon for the performers and
audience, and very striking in that
way. It has moments of very sublime
beauty juxtaposed with moments of
terror and the horrific:'
The piece — to be played by cel-
list Joan Hovda, violinist Liz Rowin,
clarinetist George Stoffan and pianist
Yin Zheng — alludes to the end of
conventional notions of rhythm and
meter. It has Catholic allusions and
imagery based on the concept of the
end of time.
Rischin, in town for the program
titled "From the Ashes of Time, Music
for All Eternity:' lived in Paris for two
years, 1993-1995, and did extensive
research.

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Rebecca Rischin

"I interviewed two of the original
performers and the families of the
other two:' says Rischin, who became
interested in the piece while hearing
it at the Sarasota Music Festival. "I
visited the site of the former prison
camp in what today is Poland and
used to be Germany.
"I learned that Messiaen was
Catholic and the quartet's clarinetist,
Henri Akoka, was of Jewish-Algerian
descent. He was drafted into the
French army before the Vichy laws
went into place.
"He was among the Jews who sur-
vived World War II protected by their
uniforms. If they were in prison before
the Vichy laws, they were immune to
those laws as long as they stayed in
those camps, but he actually put him-
self at great risk by escaping:"
Rischin, who earned both bachelor
and master degrees at Yale University,
traces her fascination with World War
II subjects to her Jewish background.
Her most recent project has been a
CD, One of a Kind, featuring unac-
companied clarinet compositions, for
Centaur Records.
"I'm working on having my book
translated into other languages',' she
says of the text already available in
French and Japanese. "There's also been
talk about making it into a film."

❑

Quartet for the End of Time will be performed 8 p.m. Saturday, March
13, at Oakland University's Varner Recital Hall, 2200 N. Squirrel Rd., in
Rochester. $9-$17. The lecture, at 4 p.m. Friday in the same hall, is free;
books will be on sale. (248) 370-2030; www.oakland.edu/mtd.

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March 4 • 2010

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