Messiaen’s Quartet For The End of Time was given two performances at St Nicholas’s Church on Friday night: one in reference and one in reality.

In the ultimate programme note, Harriet Walter and Guy Paul act a play based on their reaction to the music which The Ether Quartet then actually play.

Jessica Duchen’s drama portrays two characters, once married to each other, who meet after many years to hear the Quartet. Shyly, they discuss the nature of art and its role in faith, physics and philosophy. She believes Messiaen was responsible for their divorce, he thinks life is like chamber music. She wanted the Quartet and marriage to be everything – she has learned that music and love require giving as well as taking.

Enter four musicians to play the eight movements of Messiaen’s celebrated work, conceived and written in a POW camp, 1941 and first performed in Stalag-8. It is music of sublime intensity performed with passion and precision by Michelle So, cello and Norman Jacobs, piano – solo passages for clarinettist Steve Dummer and violinist Mandhira de Saram were heartstopping. Composition earned Messiaen his release: it set him free which is what art always does.