Thy Chamber Music Festival's closing concert - movingly beautifulThisted Dagblad
August 25th, 2008
Henrik Svane
"But see also:
A variety of lakes
Which blue
Mirror the eternity
No one can reach by hand
This is the closing of Knud Sorenson's poem, which was combined with Craig Goodman's composition for the opening of the National Park and repeated at the closing concert at Thisted Music Theatre on Sunday, August 24th.
Olivier Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano from 1941 was the soul-stirring culmination of the closing concert. The piece was written during the second World War, while he was a prisoner of war. The audience consisted of 5000 war prisoners, who listened to the performance in freezing cold. Never, Messiaen said later, has anyone listened to my music with greater attention and understanding.
In this he was most surely right. But this performance also deeply moved the audience. A modelled and organic execution procured the music, which point of origin has a text from "The Apocalypse", Chapter 10, verse 1-7, breathtakingly beautiful in an intepretation, which made time stand still and took the audience in a nearly magical seduction and beyond. Seldom has the undersigned been in doubt about which side of the music one was placed. The musicians were capable of interpretating Messiaen's strong color visions, in a way that one really felt the blue, which mirrors the eternity, which one can catch by hand. One melted away of ecstatsy to another state of mind. The clarinetist Tibi Cziger, the violinist Delyana Lazarova, the cellist Morten Zeuthen, and the pianist Naomi Kudo deserve the highest recognition for this performance.
The concert's other pieces will have to stand in our memory without comments. It should be mentioned, though, that the originator of the Thy Chamber Music Festival, received a well-earned ovation brought about by this year's participants. His vision has reached far out into the world and has once again proven its carrying capacity by dazzling musicians, professional instructors, and a staff of competent organizers and a large group of volunteers.
"....And then I feel the wind on my chin
Like here
Was the creator
And the creator whispers into my ear
Whispering:
I only demand humbleness." (Knud Sorensen)