Latest news with #NZSQ
Scoop
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
New Zealand String Quartet And Orchestra Wellington To Present A Powerful Shostakovich Anniversary Concert
Two of Aotearoa's oldest classical music organisations, the New Zealand String Quartet (NZSQ) and Orchestra Wellington, are coming together to present the first event in a powerful four-part concert series, 'Shostakovich: UNPACKED,' commemorating the 50th anniversary of the death of the composer, Dmitri Shostakovich. The series is presented by the NZSQ and will see the ensemble collaborate with a range of esteemed Wellington artists across four intimate gatherings. Orchestra Wellington will help launch the series with two concerts, hosted at Prefab Hall in Wellington, on Wednesday 9 July at 6:30pm and 8:30pm. Subsequent concerts in the series, spread over five months, will see the NZSQ musicians perform alongside the newly established Antipodes Quartet, the beloved Ghost Trio and celebrated pianist, Jian Liu. 'This significant anniversary has been in our diary for a long time and to celebrate it with our friends at Orchestra Wellington is truly special,' says Charlie Macfarlane, NZSQ General Manager. 'This collaboration will offer audiences a profound, immersive experience and a chance to explore how Shostakovich's music remains deeply relevant today.' Each concert programme features music by Shostakovich and New Zealand composers for a unique range of chamber ensembles. The series opener with Orchestra Wellington will feature Shostakovich's poignant 3rd String Quartet alongside his intensely felt Chamber Symphony, an adaptation of his powerful 8th String Quartet. This latter piece is regularly acknowledged as one of the most profound and intense experiences in classical music. Beyond Shostakovich, the evening will also 'unpack' the music of celebrated composers Alfred Schnittke and Tatiana Riabinkina, offering a fascinating dialogue between Shostakovich's legacy and the voices of contemporary artists in Aotearoa and beyond. Tickets for 'Shostakovich: UNPACKED | NZSQ + Orchestra Wellington' range from $15 to $55, with a special season pass available for all four concerts at $180 per person. Don't miss this unique opportunity to witness the powerful collaboration of the New Zealand String Quartet and Orchestra Wellington as they delve into the raw emotion and enduring significance of Dmitri Shostakovich's music. What: Shostakovich: UNPACKED | NZSQ + Orchestra Wellington When: Wednesday 9th July, 6:30 pm & 8:30 pm Where: Prefab Hall, 14 Jessie Street, Wellington Artists: New Zealand String Quartet + Orchestra Wellington Tickets: $15 - $55, Season Pass (all four concerts): $180
Otago Daily Times
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Spellbinding performance
NEW ZEALAND STRING QUARTET AT OROKONUI ECOSANCTUARY Saturday, May 10. The wonder, joy and drama of music kept a capacity audience spellbound during a thrilling performance by the New Zealand String Quartet at Orokonui Ecosanctuary on Saturday. Silhouetted against the background of sunset over the ecosanctuary's forested hills, the quartet, comprising long-standing violist Gillian Ansell, recently appointed violinist Peter Clark, and guest musicians Arna Morton (violin) and Callum Hall (cello), were magnificent throughout. The concert opened with New Zealand composer Salina Fisher's extraordinary Torino — Echoes on Putorino improvisations by Rob Thorne, a beautiful, contemplative exploration of the sounds of taonga pūoro traditional Māori instruments. The NZSQ performance was spellbinding in its gentle evocation of these ancient instruments, giving a wonderful feeling of peace. The NZSQ then shifted gear to tackle the fast-paced, youthful exuberance of Shostakovich's String Quartet No 1 in C major, working seamlessly together to draw out its shifts in tone and tempo. The concert's second half featured Grieg's monumental String Quartet in G minor, a sprightly, virtuosic four-movement work, with the NZSQ bringing its complex, orchestral texture to the fore. Led by Morton in the first violin role, the quartet were superb throughout the work, tackling its many rapid runs and trills at breakneck speed and earning a well deserved shout of excitement from the audience at its conclusion. Following sustained applause, the NZSQ returned to treat the audience to a jaunty rendition of the Stuart Reel, which really got the toes tapping. All in all, the New Zealand String Quartet's appearance at Orokonui Ecosanctuary was a fabulous musical showcase in very special surroundings. Bravo!
Otago Daily Times
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Role ‘real treasure, delight and honour'
He may be Australian, but violinist Peter Clark is enthusiastic about representing his homeland's smaller rival as part of the New Zealand String Quartet. The newest member of the quartet is on his first NZSQ tour in Australia and about to perform at Dunedin's Orokonui Ecosanctuary, he tells Rebecca Fox. It is the dream of most classical string performers to be a member of a major string quartet. But the positions are notoriously rare, so when Australian violinist Peter Clark heard a violin position was coming up in the New Zealand String Quartet (NZSQ) as Monique Lapins moved on, he put his name forward. Clark, who had been principal violin of the chamber music Omega Ensemble and previously first violinist of the Australian Chamber Orchestra's Inspire Quartet, and core member of Melbourne's Inventi Ensemble, had spent much of his time between New York and Sydney or Melbourne. ''I had been living pretty much out of a suitcase for, goodness, most of my adult life, really.'' He got the job as second violinist after an intense two-hour audition. ''It's a wonderful thing to be a part of one, actually. There are lots of orchestral jobs and lots of teaching jobs around the world. But string quartets, you're one of four voices, one of four people, and there's a lot of responsibility on you. So it's actually a real treasure, delight and honour to be now a member of the NZSQ.'' Moving to New Zealand was not a problem for the Hobart, Tasmania-raised musician, who describes many similarities between there and Wellington. ''It's wonderful to call New Zealand home and I feel very, very, very excited to be there. And I feel like there are possibilities artistically that you can have in New Zealand you can't have anywhere else in the world.'' One of those opportunities he is excited about is his plans, with NZTrio violinist Amalia Hall, to create a New Zealand Chamber Orchestra - something the country does not have. ''When I came to New Zealand, I was quite sort of shocked that it didn't have a chamber orchestra. And so I think it could be a very exciting new chapter for the classical music realm, but also collaborating with other artists. So you won't just hear classical music, you'll hear all sorts of different artistic collaborations coming together. And to create concerts that really shock and inspire and move and empower and surprise.'' While it could be a year or two away, he hopes the orchestra, which would have about five first violins, five second violins, three or four violas, cellos and one or two basses, would celebrate the best of the country's existing symphony orchestras and ensembles, coming together quarterly to perform. ''It is the perfect hybrid between a big symphony orchestra and a string quartet. It's also very tourable, but the sound and energy you get from a chamber orchestra is really unbelievable and it's an opportunity, I think, for this country to create something really new.'' Clark has experience with chamber orchestras in Australia -his first performance in Carnegie Hall in New York was with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, at the age of 20. He does not believe such an orchestra would compete with existing organisations. Instead it would celebrate their work and enable audiences to see musicians from around the country perform. ''I think its something very exciting, which will only amplify the artistic mission and visions of all of these organisations, and for me, alongside the New Zealand String Quartet.'' While he is letting this idea percolate, he is busy with his first international tour with the NZSQ alongside founding member violist Gillian Ansell and two guest musicians after the resignation last year of married couple violinist Helene Pohl and cellist Rolf Gjelsten. They are recruiting two permanent members at present which they hope to announce later this year. The NZSQ has recently been performing at the Warren Chamber Music Festival in Australia. ''It's wonderful to be representing New Zealand in Australia because I think we could be doing more and more cross-Tasman cultural kind of collaborations and concerts in each other's countries much more, I think.'' The quartet also recently collaborated with the New Zealand Dance Company and choreographer Moss Te Ururangi Patterson on 100 winds Taupo Hau Rau and are about to embark on a tour of the south of the South Island. Clark said a musician's week was ''not a typical five, two ... you don't really even know what day it is most of the time, if I'm honest''. ''It keeps you on your toes and it's exciting.'' In Dunedin, they will return to Orokonui Ecosanctuary to perform - last year's concert there sold out. This year they will play a varied programme, including New Zealand composer Salina Fisher's Tōrino - echoes on pūtōrino improvisations by Rob Thorne, Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No.3 and Edvard Grieg's String Quartet in G minor, accompanied by Auckland cellist Callum Hall and Christchurch violinist Arna Morton. ''It's interesting that music like Shostakovich can sound so strikingly relevant and effective. And then after the interval, a wonderful, almost quartet of symphonic proportions, a Grieg G minor quartet, which will just bring the house down. It's quite one of those big showstopper pieces.'' Clark plays a 1784 Lorenzo Storioni violin, leant by the Lily Duncan Trust, an instrument he describes as being like another limb and one he does not let out of his sight when travelling. ''They're basically strapped to us, almost like the Blues Brothers when they handcuff their suitcase of money to their wrists. We do take great care of them. We're very lucky to have these beautiful instruments that can sound gorgeous. And it's interesting that we don't really own an instrument, we're merely sort of custodians of that instrument, keeping it safe for the next person when we're all gone.'' It is not unusual for Clark, who has also performed as concertmaster with New Zealand Opera, Sydney Chamber Opera, Victoria Opera, Royal New Zealand Ballet, Darwin Symphony Orchestra, and Orchestra Wellington, to have multiple projects on the go as he is passionate about music advocacy and education as well, something that developed out of his own childhood experiences. Clark grew up in a musical family, with both his mother and aunt being pianists, but the family's musical legacy began with his grandmother, who was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for her services to music education, having taught piano from age 16 to 86. ''So I'm very lucky to have been part of this sort of line of wonderful musicians.'' He cannot remember how he came to play the violin, but it was his mother's second instrument. ''I can't remember a time I didn't have a violin or didn't have one in my hands or didn't consider myself a violinist.'' But he considers his fate was sealed during secondary school when he and his younger brother, now a viola player in the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and two other boys from school who played the cello and violin formed a string quartet. ''We would go busking every Saturday. And we actually, we got so good at busking, we played by memory.'' After busking they would head to one of the boys' homes and play tennis and rehearse chamber music. ''And then eat Nutella sandwiches, not quite red wine and beer at those times. Eat Nutella sandwiches, play video games, play tennis and play chamber music after busking and making our tax-free money in the morning.'' All four are now professional musicians playing around the world. While it was an idyllic way to grow up, his older brother is severely disabled and now lives in supported living. He also plays the violin. ''But he did a lot for William and I in terms of giving us perspective and inspired in myself a lot of the outreach and programmes and engagement work that I've done across the world in New York and Australia, regional Australia especially.'' Clark, who has a MBA in Arts Innovation, firmly believes that music can be used to bring people together and bring meaning to people's lives. He ran a programme for a string quartet through the Australian Chamber Orchestra at the Royal Melbourne Children's Hospital. ''We had to go there a lot growing up for our older brother, you know, two or three times a year from Hobart. These young kids at the hospital, which I'd been one of, a sibling of a sick kid, and often sort of sitting around, and to bring something like a string quartet and bring music and for sick kids who couldn't come to the music, we brought it to them.'' It is a side of his career that he puts equal importance on alongside his own performing career. ''So I'm always also interested alongside sort of high art music, kind of concert giving, the way music can be used to build community and bring meaning to all different stakeholders and individuals in our world.'' He believes musicians can learn so much from the people they come into contact with in their careers. ''I think to see how much music can mean, it empowers young people, you know, the beautiful smiles on their faces and the sort of relief and the sort of suspension of their suffering just for a short while is really powerful and meaningful. It's quite a beautiful thing. ''That certainly inspires us to keep doing more.'' That is important in an increasingly technological world, as is educating and inspiring the next generation of musicians through education programmes. ''It's important we keep these acoustic art forms and manual ways of doing things, just keeping them really strong. Because I think human beings, I think Covid showed us and taught us, that we actually crave human connection and we want to be at live concerts and we want to experience something real. I mean, AI can be wonderful and it's going to help us a lot in our world, but I think music's always helped us and will continue to.'' To see: New Zealand String Quartet, Orokonui Ecosanctuary, May 10 The Lodge, Arrowtown Lifestyle Village, May 11
Otago Daily Times
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Ecosanctuary concert returns
Gillian Ansell, NZSQ violist. Photos: supplied Following a sell-out performance last year, a new-look New Zealand String Quartet (NZSQ) will return to perform at Orokonui Ecosanctuary Te Korowai o Mihiwaka this month. The concert, which will be held Saturday, May 10, at 5pm at Orokonui Ecosanctuary cafe, marks the return of the popular quartet to the city, with a fresh programme of music, NZSQ said in a statement. Peter Clark, NZSQ violinist. The programme will feature music bridging the ancient and modern. These will include Tōrino — echoes on pūtōrino improvisations by Rob Thorne, a powerful and haunting piece by New Zealand composer Salina Fisher, the emotional intensity of Shostakovich's 3rd String Quartet and the passionate Nordic drama of Grieg's sweeping G minor Quartet. Arna Morton, NZSQ guest violinist. For this concert, long-standing NZSQ violist Gillian Ansell will be joined by recently appointed violinist Peter Clark, along with Christchurch-based guest musicians Arna Morton (violin) and Callum Hall (cello). As the NZSQ's mission is to share the joy of chamber music with all through accessible and engaging performances, each piece of music will be introduced by the quartet members themselves. Callum Hall, NZSQ guest cellist. The concert is a partnership between NZSQ and Orokonui Ecosanctuary and a portion of the ticket price will be donated to support the ecosanctuary's vital work with wildlife. Tickets are available via — APL
Scoop
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
NZSQ Inaugurates Wellington Chamber Music's New Season
Opinion – Howard Davis The freshly reconstituted New Zealand String Quartet inaugurated Wellington Chamber Musics 2025 season at St Andrews On The Terrace with an intriguing programme. 'The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.' – G.K. Chesterton, AlI I Survey. The freshly reconstituted New Zealand String Quartet inaugurated Wellington Chamber Music's 2025 season at St Andrew's On The Terrace with an intriguing programme that included rigorous renditions of John Psathas' KARTSIGAR, Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No.1 in C major, and Edvard Grieg's String Quartet in G minor. Established in 1987, the New Zealand String Quartet is Aotearoa's longest-serving professional string quartet and internationally renowned for its insightful interpretations and dynamic style. It has played a lead role in music education at Victoria University's School of Music since 1991, hosts the annual Adam Summer School for Chamber Music in Nelson, and mentors young musicians from across the motu. A proud cultural ambassador, it has not only commissioned over a hundred and fifty original works by Kiwis, but also actively championed Maori music. Last year, married couple Helene Pohl and Rolf Gjelsten (who had performed with the NZSQ for thirty years) were accused of 'serious and sensitive issues' apparently involving nepotism and conflicts of interest in their teaching roles. This led to their abrupt resignations from both the University and the NZSQ and the removal of their profiles and images from the their website, constituting an enormous loss to Wellington's music community as they are both supremely gifted musicians and widely regarded as dedicated and inspiring teachers. The NZSQ's two remaining members, Peter Clark and Gillian Ansell, subsequently recruited guest artists Anna van der Zee and Callum Hall. Following a period of extensive study and overseas performances with leading international string quartets, van der Zee is now a First Violin for the NZSO, while Hall has toured New Zealand with some of the country's leading orchestras. Although Pohl and Gjelsten will be sorely missed, the new members acquitted themselves admirably under these unfortunate circumstances, retaining not only the Quartet's customarily high degree of bravura versatility, but also its adventurous programming. The intriguing sequencing of these three 'difficult' pieces in reverse chronological order traced the organic roots of Psathas' post-modernism backwards, through Shostakovich's uncompromising modernism to Grieg's lyrical Nordic Romanticism, which heralded the future direction of much twentieth-century classical music. Despite often disparaging Grieg's abilities as a composer and pianist, the falling introductory motif inspired Claude Debussy's subsequent experiments in diverse sonorities – particularly (according to English musicologist Gerald Abraham) his own String Quartet, which was also comnposed in G minor. The son of Greek immigrant parents, Psathas grew up in Taumaruni and attended Napier Boys' High School, leaving early to study composition and piano at Victoria University. He supported himself as a student partly by playing up to nine gigs a week in a jazz trio. His musical style combines elements of jazz, classical, Eastern European and Middle Eastern, avant-garde, rock, and electronica. In 2018 he retired from his university tenure to become a full-time composer and was granted the position of Emeritus Professor at the New Zealand School of Music. Two years later, he was appointed Composer-in-Residence with Orchestra Wellington. A retrospective concert of his chamber music was part of the 2000 New Zealand International Festival of the Arts, culminating with the premiere of a specially commissioned Piano Quintet. In his programme notes to that concert, Psathas described his process of composing as follows – 'When I write music, it's not a sense of inventing I experience, as much as it is a sense of finding something that exists at the remote periphery of what I know. It is like seeing things – that aren't really there – in the corner of one's eye, but not spinning around to view them, because then they would simply cease to be. It is a case of being aware of a thing in one's peripheral vision and, while staring straight ahead, trying to decipher, without looking at it, the true nature of what it is. What one is finding is exactly the right thing for any given moment in a musical work.' KARTSIGAR was written in 2004 and consists of two movements (Unbridled, Manos Breathes the Voice of Life into Kartsigar and Vagelis Varies the Sazi Riff at the Paradiso), both of which are infused with a sonorously haunting and luminescent quality that evokes the Eastern Orthodox heritage of Byzantine music, whose earliest composers have been remembered by name since the fifth century. In his programme notes to KARTSIGAR, Psathas commented – 'Both movements of this work began as transcriptions of recorded performances by two of Greece's living master-musicians, clarino player Manos Achalinotopoulos and percussionist Vagelis Karypis. The transcriptions are based on two separate recordings of a traditional taximi entitled Kartsigar. Taximia form part of an oral tradition where improvisation played an important role. The taximi Kartsigar comprises two elements: an ostinato and the improvised melody. The melody forms the basis of the first movement of the quartet, and the ostinato forms the basis of the second.' 'The first movement grows from my transcription of Manos (whose surname translates to 'he who cannot be bridled') performing his own astonishing realisation of Kartsigar on the CD Klarino … The traditional ostinato has been removed from this movement and replaced by a pedal note (F#), which creates a very different set of tensions and resolutions for the improvised melody. The ostinato in Kartsigar is heard unaccompanied in the first two measures of the second movement, and then continues throughout. Through transcription of his live performance, I discovered that Vagelis had produced some eighty separate variations of the ostinato almost without repetition. This sequence of variations became the basis for the second movement of the quartet.' Composed in six weeks after the second birthday of his daughter during the summer of 1938, Shostakovich's String Quartet No.1 in C major lasts less than fifteen minutes and looks back to the comfort and balanced elegance of the eighteenth century for its inspiration. Shostakovich said he had 'visualised childhood scenes, somewhat naïve and bright moods associated with spring … The whole year after completing Symphony No. 5 I did nothing. I merely wrote the Quartet, consisting of four small sections. No special idea or emotions had stimulated me to write it, and I thought the effort would fail. I wrote the first page as a kind of exercise in the quartet form, and I never thought I would complete it.' As Julian Barnes described in his masterful meditation on the relationship between art and political power The Noise of Time, the previous years were marked by Stalin's campaign against artistic 'formalism' in general and repeated denunciations of Shostakovich in Pravda in particular, which caused his monthly earnings from both commissions and performances of his music to decline markedly. 1936 marked the beginning of the Great Terror, in which many of his friends and relatives were either imprisoned or killed. Convinced he was about to be arrested, Shostakovich managed to secure an appointment with the Chairman of the State Committee on Culture, who reported back to Stalin that he had instructed the composer to 'reject formalist errors and in his art attain something that could be understood by the broad masses.' Given this dangerously repressive context, it's hardly surprising that Shostakovich confined himself to relatively accessible compositions immediately afterwards. His String Quartet No.1 in C major begins softly with almost childlike innocence, its language uncharacteristically tonal and often serene. The shocking dissonances and tense harmonic undulations of his symphonies are largely absent, providing a sense of emotional respite after the tumult of his more complex compositions. The first movement is in sonata-allegro form in C major, starting with an exposition of flowing chords under an opening theme, which then moves to a contrasting second theme. After a brief development section and recapitulation, the movement comes to a close. The slow second movement, in A minor, consists of eight variations on a folk-like melody first played on solo viola and ends with a delicious pizzicato A minor chord. The third movement is set in the remote key of C minor, opening with a rapid theme in 3/4 time, before moving on to the trio in F major which is slightly more relaxed in tempo. The scherzo is then repeated again, with the coda briefly recalling the trio theme, while the final movement returns to the home key of C major. Edvard Grieg began composing his infrequently performed String Quartet in G minor in 1877, writing to a friend that it was not designed to 'peddle occasional flashes of brilliance,' but instead 'aims towards breadth, soaring flight, and above all resonance for the instruments for which it is written.' Van der Zee's playing on Greg Squires' marvellous Milano 1760 Landolfi violin possessed a lush and verdurous quality that was certainly solemn in parts, but also joyous in its conclusion. All four performers clearly revelled in the opportunity to display their prowess with some simultaneous fortissimo double-stopping in multiple instruments that produced a richness of texture that suggested a far larger ensemble and had the audience wanting to hear much more. In conclusion, Anthony Grigg's insightful programme notes are worth quoting – 'The density of sound in this quartet was unusual for its time … [Grieg] creates different timbres by use of a more subtle counterpoint, seamless voice-leading across all four instruments, and reference to folk and dance music. In combination, these create a work of considerable diversity and texture. Liszt, a friend and supporter of Grieg, admired this work and welcomed its addition to the repertoire, where it remains as one of the most original and influential quartets of the late nineteenth century.' 'The quartet uses the melody of Grieg's own Ibsen-inspired song Spillemaend ('Minstrel') as the principal motif throughout all four movements. Its opening descending intervals … serve to bind together the whole work and provide it with thematic and melodic unity. [It] is first heard in the slow introduction to the first movement Un poco andante – Allegro molto ed agitato, then interrupts the tranquil waltz rhythm of the Romanze: Andantino with an agitated second section and reappears as the opening theme in the Intermezzo: Allegro molto marcato before its quieter central section – Più vivo e scherzando. The last movement begins with a slow introduction in which the motif returns before the music launches into a Finale: Lento – Presto al saltarello, with its folk-like melody and leaping dance rhythms based on a fast triple meter and ending optimistically in G major.' Wellington Chamber Music's 2025 season continues on Sunday 25 May with the Amici Ensemble piano quartet performing Jean Françaix' String Trio in C major, Op.2, Gustave Fauré's Piano Quartet No.2 in G minor, Op.45, Johannes Brahms' Piano Quartet No.3 in C minor Op.60. For more concert details, see
