3 Nov, 7.30pm, Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

This event replaces the originally planned concert Penderecki: A Retrospective, as unfortunately conductor Zvonimir Hačko is unable to perform due to illness.

Players from the London Sinfonietta will perform two works by Penderecki:

• Per Slava
• Quartet for clarinet & string trio

Following the performance, Jonathan Cross will put Penderecki’s work in context, and provide the story of the extraordinary background to Messiaen’s profoundly affecting chamber work.

Both composers were moved to write music by the terrible events they lived through in the 20th century, and Quartet for the End of Time was created when the composer was interned in a prisoner-of-war camp in eastern Germany during the Second World War.

From the event webpage: “Penderecki’s 70-year composing career exemplified the arc of Polish musical modernism, and in 2012 The Guardian called him ‘arguably Poland’s greatest living composer’. He died in 2020, leaving behind an influential body of large-scale works, but also a wealth of striking and intellectual chamber music.”

For further information and to book tickets:

Quartet for the End of Time (southbankcentre.co.uk)