SALT LAKE CITY — The NOVA Chamber Music Series will continue its 40^th Anniversary Season with the second concert of the Subscription Series, held in Libby Gardner Hall at the University of Utah School of Music.

This concert showcases an exceptional lineup of Utah performers: musicians include Utah Symphony Principal Cellist Rainer Eudeikis, Principal Second Violin Claude Halter, Associate Principal Clarinet Erin Svoboda, and pianist Kimi Kawashima of Westminster College. They will be performing C.P.E Bach’s inventive Cello Concerto in A Major and Olivier Messiaen’s miraculous Quartet for the End of Time.

Rainer Eudeikis joined the Utah Symphony as principal cellist in 2014, following completion of his studies at the Curtis Institute of Music. He has also been principal cellist of the Mainly Mozart Festival, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, and Central City Opera, and has performed with the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Canada as guest principal cellist.

 

Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time originated in very particular circumstances. Near the beginning of World War II, Messiaen was summoned for military service. He was captured in May 1940, and taken to a prisoner-of-war camp at Görlitz in Silesia (now in Poland).

 

In the dead of winter of 1940-41, he wrote the quartet for the instruments on hand among the camp’s inmates: violin, cello, clarinet, and (himself playing) piano. The first performance took place before a large audience of prisoners. It was his most ambitious work so far – a sequence of eight movements that spoke to a Biblical passage from Revelations.

Matched with C.P.E Bach’s Cello Concerto in A Major, this concert is sure to deliver on a wide range of sound and emotion, and will certainly continue the incredible momentum of NOVA’s 40^th Anniversary Season.

Audience members are invited to join NOVA Artistic Director Jason Hardink for a pre-concert talk on C.P.E Bach and Messiaen. Hardink wrote his doctoral thesis on Messiaen and will spend much of the discussion offering listeners background and musical examples from the Quartet for the End of Time. Pre-concert talks are held in room 270 at the University Of Utah School Of Music at 2:30 PM.

 

NOVA’s Subscription Series consists of six concerts, with each performance juxtaposing old and new music performed by outstanding Utah classical musicians. Programming includes works by both local and nationally renowned composers.

 

Sunday November 19, 3 PM

Libby Gardner Hall, University of Utah School of Music

$20 general admission, $18 seniors, students free.

For more information, please visit novaslc.org or email [email protected].