This “Closer to the Music” evening is dedicated to the work of Olivier Messiaen. Recordings of works by this exceptional composer will be played, with short interjections by pianist Monika Palšauskaitė, a Doctor of Performing Arts, who has been researching contemporary trends in the interpretation of Messiaen's piano music. She will share her thoughts on the composer and the world of his music.

The composer believed that music could convey not only emotion or beauty, but also a sense of being - calm, solid, uninterrupted. He wrote about time as a spiritual phenomenon and devoted most of his work to one theme - the presence of God, which he tried to express in sound.

This evening's focus is on the Quartet for the End of Time, composed in a prisoner-of-war camp in 1941. There is neither protest nor drama in it, just a state between suffering and peace, between earthly time and something that transcends it. It is no coincidence that the work is in eight parts: seven are the days of the creation of the world and the eighth is a sign of eternity.

In Messiaen's work, time is not measured - it is experienced. The music seems to suspend the usual flow and creates a different rhythm of being: without urgency, without end, without the desire to go somewhere. It attracts because it allows us to listen in a different way - quieter, deeper, longer.