Music in a Jail

I went to my third Chamber Music Festival concert tonight. This time, the venue was Kilmainham Gaol (yes, spelled like that). The venue was well chosen for the music, since the main work was Olivier Messiaen's magnificent Quartet for the End of Time, which he wrote and was first performed while he incarcerated in a prison camp during the send world war.

What was then Opera Theatre Company (now Irish National Opera) put on an excellent production of Beethoven's Fidelio here many years ago. On that occasion the audience were seated around the perimeter walls and the performance took place in the centre of the space. That would have been much better arrangement tonight rather than the rows of seats on the flat with a platform at the end.

I went for the Messiaen, and that was a really really fine performance. The whole evening was performed without a break, and the all the pieces before the it were world premieres, none of which I'll probably hear again.

A fly in the ointment was my taxi drives there and back. The total cost was a whopping 70-odd euro! Mind you, I knew none of that until I switched my phone back on and viewed the receipts. One thing that stood out on my return trip was that the temperature was 21º. At almost 10pm!