Those of us fortunate enough to attend a wealth of concerts all year round know that, once in a blue moon, usually quite without warning, we may experience a ‘pin-drop’ moment, when time seems to stand still. Composers rarely plan it that way.

But Olivier Messiaen did. Stuck in a Silesian POW camp in 1940, he needed to dream. Himself a pianist, he found other inmates who played clarinet, violin and cello - and wrote his Quartet for the End of Time, now a 20th century classic, based on the vision of the angel in the Book of Revelations.

If Wednesday’s profoundly affecting account by the Chamber Players did not quite provide that glimpse of eternity, it came close, holding the audience spellbound. There was a placidity in the angel’s vocalise, on which clarinettist Peter Sparks capitalised in his supremely controlled solo, Abyss of the Birds. Elsewhere, too, it was the gently hovering movements - duos involving piano with violin or cello - rather than the jazzy or menacing dances that provided the cathartic purity for which Messiaen so brilliantly aimed.

Earlier, Sarah Butcher had delivered a crisp, forthright account of Debussy’s Cello Sonata, with Matthew Schellhorn her attentive pianist. Sparks brought a spritely panache to Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for solo clarinet (1919), and Bartok’s Contrasts, with clarinet and piano led by Maya Magub’s agile violin, was especially effective in its terrifyingly devilish final dance. But the Messiaen was something else.