Radio 3 in Concert

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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Music: Classical

The best concerts from across the UK and Europe. Available to listen online for 30 days

Experience the best concerts from across the UK and Europe. Available to listen online for 30 days

Radio 3 in Concert: Quartet for the End of Time

Quartet for the End of Time

BBC Radio 3 - Radio 3 in Concert, Quartet for the End of Time

The Guildhall School of Music performs Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time.

Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, written and premiered in a Nazi prisoner of war camp during WWII, performed by musicians from the Guildhall School of Music and  Drama.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra's Total Immersion 'Music for the End of Time' in January this year focused on the Theresienstadt Ghetto of the 1940s.  Here many of the finest musical talents of the time were held pawns in an appalling Nazi propaganda exercise, then taken to the  concentration camps from which they never returned. 

Over the course of a day at the Barbican, to reflect their fate, the number of performers on the Barbican stage dwindled from full orchestra to conclude with just four. Messiaen composed his Quartet for the End of Time for fellow musicians imprisoned with him in 1941 in a Silesian camp, saying of the premiere: ‘never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension’.  Outstanding musicians from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama gave a performance described by The Guardian as 'sensationally played'.  

Recorded at the Barbican on Sunday 23rd January 2022
Presented by Georgia Mann

Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time 

Sabine Sergejeva (Violin)
Ben Tarlton  (Cello)
Cara Doyle  (Clarinet)
Ben Smith  (Piano)


Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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