CMNZ: The Tūī and the Kahikatea (Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time) | 19 April 2025

The Tūī and the Kahikatea

OLIVIER MESSIAEN: QUARTET FOR THE END OF TIME (with Pacifica poetry)

Saturday 19 April 2025 at 5pm

Peter Scholes Clarinet | Simeon Broom Violin | James Tennant Cello | Katherine Austin Piano | Faumuina Felolini Maria Tafuna’i Poet

This is a concert for our times, originally conceived as an artistic contribution to the Auckland Climate Festival in September 2023. The tūī “...usher(s) in a world where the birdsongs/ Could be heard again/ And this song that delights you/ Is full of aroha and gratitude/ Take your steps carefully, she calls.” - from The Tūī and the Kahikatea. The performers present a reflective evening of music and poetry. The famous eight-movement quartet by Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) was composed in a prisoner of war camp during the Second World War. He was an organist / pianist, and in the camp, under trying conditions, there was also a violinist, a clarinettist and a cellist. “If I composed this quartet for anything,” Messiaen wrote later, “It was to escape from the snow, the war, the captivity, to escape from myself. What I gained most of all from it was that, among three hundred thousand prisoners, I was perhaps the only one who wasn’t a prisoner.”

This music, at times angry, at times a lament, at times bursting with bird song, leads us to a place of simplicity and transcendent beauty, taking us to the core of our existence and a place of courage in the face of what we see happening in the world. Faumuina Felolini Maria Tafuna’i brings dramatic presentations of her poetry about the threat of climate change to the Pacific Islands and of “wayfinding” our path from the present situation. The poems are carefully matched with the mood of each movement. The impact is powerful.

This concert is presented in partnership with Chamber Music New Zealand

Chamber Music New Zealand In Partnership Series highlights outstanding musicians of Aotearoa New Zealand and the world, celebrating the richness and variety of chamber music repertoire. Each year CMNZ collaborates with music societies and arts organisations around the country to present this series.

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