Silence – Turku Music Festival
Can a composition consist entirely of silence? This question is addressed in the concert titled Silence, planned by Klaus Mäkelä for 2020 and now finally being realised at the Festival in August 2023. Possible answers are provided by Erwin Schulhoff in ‘In futurum’ from the jazz-influenced suite Fünf Pittoresken (1919) and by John Cage in the grand-daddy of all silence-based pieces of music, 4’33”. Composer Olivier Messiaen personally witnessed the horrors of war and wrote his compelling chamber music piece Quatuor pour la fin du temps in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp in Görlitz, Poland, where it was premiered in January 1941.
Programme
Erwin Schulhoff
5 Pittoresken, op. 31
John Cage
4’33”
Olivier Messiaen
Quatuor pour la fin du temps
“Quartet for the end of time”
Tuulia Ylönen, clarinet
Essi Höglund, violin
Tatu Kauppinen, cello
David Munk-Nielsen, piano