THERE'S a brief line at the end of the printed score of Messiaen's "Quartet for the end of time". Like many another such line, it details the time and place of the work's origins. But the words "termine au Stalag VIIIA, Gorlitz, Silesie, en janvier 1941", carry no everyday message, and there cannot be many listeners unaffected by the knowledge that this music's first, rapt audience, was made up of the composer's fellow prisoners of war.
Programming the work in a late night slot at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival in Bantry House was a sure means of heightening further its tone of mysticism. Pianist Philippe Cassard had the full measure of the music, from utterances gentle as haloes of breath to angular glittering cascades and clarinettist Romain Guyot embraced the desolate stillness of his solo in the "Abime des oiseaux" with uncommon sensitivity.
There was no lack of spiritual affinity from violinist Anthony Marwood (though he did seem set on a faster tempo than Cassard in their closing "Louange a l'Immortalite de Jesus"); the playing of cellist Robert Cohen seemed, by contrast, at something of a remove from the music, as it had earlier in the day, too, when he partnered Marwood in Ravel's demandingly elusive Sonata for violin and cello.
The day also brought a sharply characterised performance of Bartok's "Contrasts" (Cassard/Marwood/Guyot), a rich (at times almost overpoweringly so) Ravel "Introduction and Allegro" (from the Parisii Quartet with harpist Andrea Malir, flautist William Dowdall and, again, Guyot), and also the Brahms Piano Quintet (from Barry Douglas with the RTE Vanbrugh Quartet), full of amiable interplay and altogether thrilling in moments of full flight.
