Olivier Messiaen's 'Quartet for the End of Time' is performed by Renaud Capuçon, violin, Gautier Capuçon, cello, Denis Kozhukhin, piano, and Jörg Widmann, clarinet.
(Taken to Germany as a prisoner of war in 1940, hunger and intense cold gave the French composer vivid dreams that evoked the Apocalypse. The experience inspired Messiaen to write the transcendent eight-movement work, which received its premiere in front of fellow prisoners and guards. Shostakovich's Second Piano Trio, composed and premiered in 1944, is a haunting lament for the tragic victims of World War II, and the horror of war in general.)
