The ‘Quartet for the End of Time’ (1941) is an apocalyptic vision in which the composer Olivier Messiaen, ‐ at the time of writing a war prisoner in Germany – transcends his day‐to‐day catholic faith by inventing ingenious composition techniques in order to achieve a musical translation of the notion of eternity.

In 2011 Jean-Pierre Deleuze composed ‘Meguru’, a piece for baritone and quintet, commissioned by Het Collectief and based on the Japanese philosophy of life. To round out his insight, Deleuze composed a second ‘Meguru’ in 2019, 'Le jardin nu', this time with a soprano, so that both find themselves in a harmonious yin-yang relationship, so to speak.

Het Collectief is invited for the second time at the Melos-Ethos Festival in Bratislava. With exclusively chamber music of the last ten years, we intend to give an idea of what composers of today have to offer. Our visit to Slovakia came to the notice of an art gallery in the nearby town of Nitra.