A pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon

Music for a Sunday Afternoon National Gallery of Canada Auditorium Sunday at 2 p.m.

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) spent a portion of the Second World War in a German prisoner of war camp. The staff at the camp must have been unusually cultured; they were aware of the composer’s importance and permitted, even encouraged, him to compose. There were four instrumentalists among the prisoners, a clarinetist, a violinist, a cellist and a pianist, Messiaen himself.

He wrote his Quartet for the End of Time for that combination of instruments. There’s a legend that the piano had one note that couldn’t be sounded, so it wasn’t used in the score. The musicians in Sunday afternoon’s performance were Kimball Sykes, clarinet, Jessica Linnebach, violin, Amanda Forsyth, cello, and Angela Cheng, piano.

The work is unusual in many ways. Not only does it have a striking title, each of its movements has a title reflecting some mystical meditation. One, for example, is called Cluster of Rainbows for the Angel Who Announces the End of Time; another is Dance of the Fury for the Seven Trumpets.

It was a generally good performance, though it started with an unfocused reading of the Liturgy of the Crystal. The remaining movements were successful in varying degrees. The best was Abyss of Birds for unaccompanied clarinet. Sykes, the National Arts Centre Orchestra’s principal clarinetist for many years, did an amazing job with it. His pianissimi, at times verging on the inaudible, were even more impressive than the great fortes and huge jumps in register.

The other two notable solos, both with piano accompaniment, were Praise for the Eternity of Jesus played by Forsyth and the final movement, Praise for the Immortality of Jesus, which Linnebach rendered most beautifully.

The Quartet took up the second half of the program, which had earlier begun with two works by J. S. Bach.

The first was the great Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp minor from Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier. The pianist was Cheng, the only musician to take part in the entire program. Her playing in this piece was assured and her interpretation more or less mainstream. Enjoyable in other words.

She next accompanied violist Pinchas Zukerman in a nice if unremarkable account of Bach’s Sonata in G for viola da gamba and keyboard. This piece is more often heard on the cello or occasionally on the instrument for which it was intended. It works well on the modern viola as well, even though the latter has nothing to do with gambe (legs).