New York Philharmonic’s principal players Carter Brey and Anthony McGill are joined by pianist Inon Barnatan and former New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert for a nuanced and heart-wrenching performance of Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. Inspired by texts from the Book of Revelation, the work was composed during Messiaen’s internment in a German prisoner-of-war camp and was first performed by and for fellow prisoners in 1941. The Met’s Temple of Dendur provides the solemn setting for a work the New Yorker calls “the most ethereally beautiful music of the twentieth century.”

This Digital Premiere is presented as part of Carnegie Hall’s online festival Voices of Hope. Highlighting musical works created in times of war, repression, and tyranny, the festival is an apt setting for Messiaen’s transcendent composition, created in unimaginable circumstances at one of history’s darkest moments. At our present moment, following a year of pandemic and loss, the composition is testament to the resilience of art and artists.  

Learn more at Voices of Hope.