News & reviews
News & media releases
Keep up to date with the New Zealand String Quartet’s busy schedule through news items, reviews and regular newsletters.
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Reviews
What the critics think – read reviews of New Zealand String Quartet performances around the world.
Features
Find out more about the work of the New Zealand String Quartet through special feature articles.
How did the Kings Place project come about?
The New Zealand at Kings Place story began in 2008 when the New Zealand String Quartet visited London during a nine-concert European tour. While in London Elizabeth met with Peter Millican, Chief Executive of Kings Place. Peter explained the venue’s innovative themed weeks of artist-curated concerts, and he invited the Quartet to offer a group of programmes for a future week.
Caring for our instruments
‘Our instruments are a huge part of our lives. How they are sounding affects how we feel as players. We’re happy when they sound good and frustrated when they don’t,’ Gillian Ansell, viola player with the New Zealand String Quartet explains.
Our agents abroad
We meet Sarah Bruce, The New Zealand String Quartet’s London-based agent for the UK, European and Asian markets and Director of the agency Lomonaco Artists; and Martha Woods, the Quartet’s North American agent at Jonathan Wentworth Associates.
Annual themed concert series
Each year, the New Zealand String Quartet takes its audiences on a soul-stirring journey through a selected part of the great string quartet or wider chamber repertoire.
A longer journey for The Abiding Tides
When the New Zealand String Quartet and soprano Jenny Wollerman gave the world premiere performance of Ross Harris’s The Abiding Tides at the 2010 New Zealand Festival, it was clear that a major new work had joined the canon. The power and poignancy of Vincent O’Sullivan’s spare poetry and Harris’s evocative settings created a compelling work that gripped the audience. “The song cycle made a profound impression,” said critic John Button.
International exchanges
3 Faces of Ebony, one of numerous wonderful concerts at the recent Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson, featured virtuoso James Campbell, a Canadian clarinetist visiting the Festival for the second time. Campbell, “Jim” to his friends, first met the New Zealand String Quartet when the five musicians were programmed together in a concert in Barrie, Ontario in 2004. They established great artistic rapport and became musical colleagues and friends in a relationship that demonstrates what cultural exchange is all about.
Venues
Douglas Beilman, 2nd violinist of the New Zealand String Quartet, takes time out from a rehearsal of Shostakovich to explain the Quartet’s approach to concert venues.
10 questions – Helene Pohl
Meeting an audience member in Dunedin who had been good friends with her grandparents in Germany and performing in Florence while twelve firemen stood guard backstage are two of the more memorable moments in Helene Pohl’s concert career. Helene discusses her life as a member of the New Zealand String Quartet.
10 questions – Douglas Beilman
Born into a musical family, Douglas Beilman became hooked on chamber music after being taken to a Tokyo String Quartet in his early teens and has been has been playing in string quartets ever since. When the New Zealand String Quartet toured in 2009 to his home state of Kansas, Douglas had the “extraordinarily satisfying” experience of playing as a seasoned professional to over 20 members of his family.
10 questions – Gillian Ansell
One of the founding members of the New Zealand String Quartet, violist Gillian Ansell remembers taking eight months to prepare for their first public concert back in 1987. With her current schedule of performing, touring, recording and teaching, such time would now be a luxury, but there’s very little Gillian doesn’t passionately enjoy about her busy career as a chamber musician.
10 questions – Rolf Gjelsten
Cellist Rolf Gjelsten began his performing life playing the accordion as a child. Now as a member of the New Zealand String Quartet he travels the world with his 300 year old cello, and says he could write a book about his experiences – in small cars, on the ice, in buses, trains, planes and even on bikes! But he’s always been most profoundly inspired by the musical journey.
10 questions – Elizabeth Kerr
The tables are turned and interviewees become interviewers as the members of the New Zealand String Quartet ask 10 questions of their New Zealand manager, Elizabeth Kerr.
10 questions – Péter Nagy
Virtuoso Hungarian pianist Péter Nagy tours with the New Zealand String Quartet in August and September 2011. Here he talks about his international career, including being admitted to the Liszt Academy in Budapest at the age of eight, and how his family feel about returning to visit Christchurch, the city that was once their home.
10 questions – Helen Philpott
It’s now 10 years since the Turnovsky Endowment Trust began supporting the Quartet’s annual themed series. The Trust’s Chair, Helen Philpott tells us about her special role in supporting the Quartet, her father Fred Turnovsky’s vision for chamber music in New Zealand, the piano music she loves to play & what her dream chamber music concert would comprise.
10 questions – Rose Campbell
Rose Campbell, the New Zealand String Quartet’s new Manager, talks about what attracted her to the job, where she’s come from (9 years in a senior management role at Creative New Zealand), her music background and eclectic musical tastes, and her vision for the Quartet over the next few years.
The Adam Chamber Music Festival – building a bonfire
A festival has been described as a bonfire built by artists working together – to which audiences come because they are attracted by the sparks and the glow. In February 2011 the 11th Adam Chamber Music Festival took place in Nelson. Have you ever wondered how and when this special Festival bonfire began?
Why does the Quartet play standing up?
If you’ve attended concerts by the Quartet, you may have noticed that unlike most string quartets they always stand while playing. 1st Violinist Helene Pohl explains how this practice began and what the Quartet believes it adds to the performance.
