At this concert, music is interspersed with reading. Jan Eliasson, diplomat and former president of the UN General Assembly, reads from Dag Hammarskjöld's book Road signs. It takes place between the movements in both works in the program. Dag Hammarskjöld was the Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1953 until his death in 1961, in what was believed to be a plane crash. A manuscript titled Road Marks was found in the residence in New York. Hammarskjöld called the notes "a kind of 'white book' concerning my negotiations with myself – and God". He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize posthumously in 1961.
We initially hear music by Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel. The Passionate Piano Trio from 1847 was a birthday present for her sister. Fanny died a few months later of a stroke and the work was not published until several years later. The music came about at a time of great political and economic unrest in Europe, with revolutions following in 1848.
When World War II broke out, the French composer Olivier Messiaen was placed in the army as a medic, but was captured in 1940 by German troops and placed in a prison camp. Some of the fellow prisoners were musicians: a clarinetist, a violinist and a cellist. Messiaen himself played the piano. He composed the Quator pour la fin de temps, Quartet for the End of Time, which was premiered in the camp in front of the deeply affected fellow prisoners – and the camp guards. It is spiritual, deeply poetic and doom-laden music - but also hopeful.
