News & media releases

The New Zealand String Quartet’s 25th anniversary project of the complete Beethoven string quartets cycle is now well underway and is being enjoyed  by audiences in New Zealand and round the world through our exciting live-streaming audience initiative.  Although the middle period Revolution series Chamber Music New Zealand tour is now completed, there are two of the Programme 4 concerts still to come. These will be presented at Expressions in Upper Hutt at 7.30pm on 11 June and at the Memorial Hall in Waikanae at 2.30pm on Sunday 17 June. The programme is:

BEETHOVEN! The Complete String Quartets 
Revolution series (Programme 4)

• String Quartet No 10 in E♭ major Opus 74 (Harp)
• String Quartet No 11 in F minor Opus 95 (Serioso)
• - Interval -
• String Quartet No 9 in C major Opus 59 No 3 (Razumovsky)

For those of you who weren’t able to attend the middle series programmes, or who would like the pleasure of watching and listening again at your leisure, we will be posting links to recordings of our live webcasts of these programmes later this month.

And of course more to come on the Late Quartets series we are touring around New Zealand in August and September!

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On Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th February the New Zealand String Quartet’s 25th anniversary project of the complete Beethoven cycle began with two concerts in the New Zealand International Arts Festival in Wellington, New Zealand. These were exclusive to the Festival and the only performances of the six quartets from Beethoven’s Opus 18 to be presented by the Quartet in New Zealand this year.

If you weren’t able to attend the concerts you are still able to enjoy recordings of  the concerts live and as they happened through recordings made available through our wonderful new live streaming initiative. Click through to this link ahttp://www.nzsq.co.nz/watch-listen/video/ and you will be taken through to the beautiful interior of St Mary of the Angels Church in Wellington enjoying the following programme:

BEETHOVEN! Part One: “The Age of Enlightenment”

Programme 1: Saturday 25 February, 6pm

• String Quartet No 3 in D major Opus 18 No 3
• String Quartet No 2 in G major Opus 18 No 2
• - Interval -
• String Quartet No 1 in F major Opus 18 No 1

Programme 2: Sunday 26 February, 7.30pm

• String Quartet No 4 in C minor Opus 18 No 4
• String Quartet No 5 in A major Opus 18 No 5
• - Interval -
• String Quartet No 6 in B♭ major Opus 18 No 6

A great musical party to celebrate the New Zealand String Quartet’s 25th anniversary celebration is well underway:  BEETHOVEN! The Complete String Quartets.

New Zealand’s favourite chamber musicians are sharing Beethoven’s complete set of String Quartets in six wonderful programmes around thirteen centres in twenty-seven concerts.

Festivities began with two concerts in the New Zealand International Arts Festival in Wellington at the end of February. These were an exclusive presentation of the first pair of BEETHOVEN! concerts, entitled The Age of Enlightenment.

Rosemary Hudson from Dunedin is one of many who have booked for the whole cycle. She’ll hear three concerts in Dunedin, two at the New Zealand International Arts Festival in Wellington and the sixth in Christchurch.

“I went to the last Beethoven cycle by the Quartet in Dunedin about a decade ago and have never forgotten it”, she says. “It was a highlight of my concert-going ‘career’, just magical. They played the quartets so beautifully and I also enjoyed their commentaries – they had something new to bring to each one. I can’t imagine anything better to celebrate their anniversary! And I thought it would be rather fun to travel to take in the whole cycle. I’ve never been to the Festival in Wellington so I’m looking forward to that and will go to some other shows too.”

Chamber Music New Zealand has taken the Quartet on the road in April and May for ten concerts of the composer’s middle period quartets, two programmes called Revolution and these are also being performed in Whangarei, Upper Hutt and Waikane.

The cycle will be completed in August and September with a twelve concert tour of The Late Quartets.

All concerts are being made available to watch and listen soon afterwards on our website thanks to our live-streaming project.

“Hearing the complete cycle”, says cellist Rolf Gjelsten “allows the listener to follow Beethoven’s development from the daring and virtuosity of his earlier works through the heroic expression of the middle period to the total mastery and profound story telling of the late quartets.”

The BEETHOVEN! cycle is a partnership project between the New Zealand String Quartet and Chamber Music New Zealand, in association with the NZ International Arts Festival.

• More information
• BEETHOVEN! programmes
• Concert locations
• How to book tickets
• Enjoy a performance of Beethoven by the Quartet

Rose Campbell, the New Zealand String Quartet’s new Manager, took up the reins this week. Rose comes to the position from a senior management role at Creative New Zealand where she has worked for the past nine years. “I’m very excited about the possibilities that this unique opportunity provides to be working in the arts sector with such a high quality and vibrant group of musicians.”

Creative New Zealand acknowledged the Quartet as one of its “leadership” organisations 10 months ago and Rose is looking forward to working with the musicians to enhance their role in the development of chamber music in New Zealand, including their important work as teachers and coaches of young musicians. “The Quartet has also developed a strong international profile in recent years” she says, “and as well as their many performances in New Zealand I’m keen to enhance their international reputation even further” .

Rose replaces Elizabeth Kerr who has managed the Quartet for five years and will continue to work on two significant 2012 projects for the organisation until April next year.

The New Zealand String Quartet has just completed a highly successful concert tour of summer music festivals in the United Kingdom, where it has been greeted by large audiences and enthusiastic ovations. The tour began in London with two programmes at the City of London Festival, which this year focussed on music and musicians from Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific under its “Trading Places” theme. The Quartet presented two mixed programmes of traditional chamber repertoire and new New Zealand music, including works by Jack Body, John Psathas, Gillian Whitehead and the world premiere of a specially composed string quartet, Kotetetete, commissioned from Scotland-based New Zealander Lyell Cresswell by Chamber Music New Zealand.  

Large audiences in historic church venues at festivals in Lichfield and Buxton followed the London concerts and the tour continued  at the Cambridge Summer Music Festival and the Petworth Festival.  So well-received was the Quartet’s programme of music by Bartok, Jack Body and Beethoven in Petworth that their concert sold out two months in advance and the festival scheduled a second, also proving popular.

Festival directors praised the Quartet’s performances, the City of London Festival acknowledging their “excellent contribution” to the programme, the Oundle Festival describing their concert as “fantastic” and commenting on how “moving” their playing was for the audience, and the Petworth Festival praising the Quartet as “magnificent” in a “really lovely concert”.

The tour finished at the Holt Festival in Norfolk on 26th July, after which the musicians headed to Canada for nine more festival concerts in Ottawa and Parry Sound.

The latest CD from the New Zealand String Quartet has just rolled off the production line for release by Atoll Records. Named from the title of a poem by Sam Hunt, Notes from a journey is a diverse and fascinating collection of works for string quartet by New Zealand composers.

All of these composers “journeyed” in some way to find their inspiration. John Psathas turned to the writings of Buddhist guru Chögyam Trungpa for Abhisheka; Jack Body traveled to the hear the musics of China, Madagascar and Bulgaria for Three Transcriptions, Ross Harris went back through time to the music of Bach’s Goldberg Variations for his Variation 25, Michael Norris explores death through Inuit, Mayan, Norse and Native American cultures in the four movements of Exitus and Gareth Farr and Richard Nunns, who collaborated to create He Poroporoaki, took this short compelling farewell for string quartet and Taonga Puoro to the home of its inspiration, Gallipoli, for its premiere.

“Some people think that New Zealand is isolated,” says New Zealand String Quartet cellist Rolf Gjelsten. “The depth, eloquence and diversity in this collection of works, however, shows that our composers feel free to draw upon an enormous range of influences and that they are working in a global context.”

Many of the works were written especially for the New Zealand String Quartet in what violinist Helene Pohl has called “a wonderful symbiosis of creativity.”

“We are strongly committed to the commissioning and performance of New Zealand music” she says “and we love the process whereby composers we know well can try things out with us, write for us again and again and explore through us the possibilities of the string quartet medium.”

To listen to samples from the CD, visit the recordings page. You can purchase it from SOUNZ, the Centre for New Zealand Music.

The New Zealand String Quartet recently recorded Schubert’s epic String Quartet in G major D887 in St Anne’s Church in Toronto. The producers were Bonnie Silver and Norbert Kraft, old friends from recording sessions of the Quartet’s acclaimed Mendelssohn set. This recording will be released on CD by Trust Records; meanwhile, you can enjoy this performance of the delightful Scherzo from the work.

The New Zealand String Quartet’s recent Schumann and Shostakovich tour in New Zealand delighted critics and audiences. Here you can enjoy two samples: the Quartet playing the second movement of Schumann’s String Quartet in A Minor Opus 41 No 1 and Shostakovich’s 7th String Quartet in F-sharp Minor Opus 108, both recorded in the Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University, on August 31, 2010.

The latest CD by the New Zealand String Quartet is Volume 2 of their three volume recording of the compete Mendelssohn String Quartets, released by Naxos in September 2009. The Quartet’s readings of Mendelssohn on this disc quickly won praise from Gramophone Magazine, which referred to their “confidence as ensemble players”, their “strong sense of internal balance” and their focus on “expressive detail”. Volume 3 of what Gramophone reviewer Duncan Druce predicts will be an “outstanding set” will be released in May 2010.

For more information go to the Naxos website.

To listen to samples from the CD, visit the recordings page.

The New Zealand String Quartet was in Washington, DC in March for a ’sell-out’ concert in the legendary Library of Congress series.

‘Concerts from the Library of Congress’ is one of the world’s most historic and famous concert series. The invitation to perform there was a great “feather in their cap” according to Martha Woods of J Wentworth Associates, the Quartet’s North American agent. She describes it as “one of the most prestigious environments for any chamber ensemble on any continent”. The large audience gave the Quartet a standing ovation.

Dating from 1925, the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium and the concerts held there are under-pinned by the visionary arts patronage of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge (1864-1953), one of the most notable patrons in the history of American music.  Designed according to her preference for “severe and chaste beauty”, the Coolidge Auditorium has become world-famous for its magnificent acoustics and for the calibre of the artists and ensembles that have played there.  Names like Leonard Bernstein, Leopold Stokowski, the Juilliard String Quartet, Stephen Sondheim, Joshua Bell, Leontyne Price and the Beaux Arts Trio have over the years given the venue its world-wide reputation.

The New Zealand String Quartet’s concert began with Mendelssohn’s String Quartet Opus 44 No 2 and ended with Schubert’s String Quartet in G Major, D. 887.  However, the Quartet’s programme included not only traditional chamber repertoire but a New Zealand work. Richard Nunns, performer on Maori instruments, joined the ensemble for Gillian Whitehead’s quintet Hineputehue.

The title translates literally as “the woman of the sound of the gourd”, who is the Maori goddess of peace. The work was written in 2001, at the time of President Bush’s State of the Union address shortly before the invasion of Afghanistan, and Whitehead says the work “suggests the fragility rather than the celebration of peace”.  Martha Woods notes that the programme staff at the Library of Congress are keen to extend concert programmes beyond standard repertoire and were fascinated by Whitehead’s music.

While in Washington the Quartet and Nunns also offered a short private concert at the New Zealand Embassy which  included another quintet, Gareth Farr’s He Poroporoaki (A Farewell) specially composed for and premiered at the 2008 Gallipoli celebrations.  Other concerts by the Quartet and Nunns on this US tour were in Reading, Pennsylvania and Luther College, Decorah, Iowa.

Glowing reviews, enthusiastic audiences and invitations to return have greeted the New Zealand String Quartet’s thirteen concert international tour which finishes in Curacao this week. New Zealand’s most travelled classical ensemble set out for Europe a month ago and have been overwhelmed with praise for their playing and for the music by New Zealand composers they included in their programmes in Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Scotland. Nine concerts in Europe were followed by a concert in London, Ontario and three in Willemstad, Curacao.

“This tour has been an unqualified success” says Quartet Manager Elizabeth Kerr. “European presenters have been full of praise for the musicians and their programmes and have sent feedback like “breath-taking”, “profound musicality” and “fantastic playing”. Several have already asked for return visits.”

Critics were also unfailingly positive and like the audiences responded strongly to the New Zealand compositions. Gillian Whitehead’s celebration of whales Puhake ki te rangi featured in five of the programmes, with Richard Nunns joining the quartet on Maori instruments made of whale and albatross bone. Audience members surrounded Richard and the instruments after every performance and the piece was described as “a real piece of magic” and “an eye-opener”. Music by John Psathas and Gao Ping was also played on the tour, usually combined with more traditional chamber works by Schubert, Mendelssohn and Shostakovitch.

New Zealand composer Miriama Young, recently appointed to the music staff of the University of Aberdeen, attended the concert there and wrote afterwards:

“I thought the Quartet played with a striking sense of integrity, a deep connection to the repertoire and with so much nuance, delicateness and musicality! The collaboration with Richard created a richly-textured and evocative endpoint to a very powerful concert — and the audience were, I think, deeply moved. It’s just wonderful to hear such a strength and diversity of repertoire, and to experience the range of Asia-Pacific (and Mediterranean!) influences that threaded their way through the programme. The New Zealand String Quartet and Richard Nunns are true ambassadors for New Zealand, and I feel very proud!”

The New Zealand String Quartet plans to return to Europe in 2010.

The New Zealand String Quartet’s acclaimed performance of the Allegro from Beethoven’s Razumovsky Quartet in E minor Opus 59 No 2 is now on YouTube for all to enjoy.