New Zealand String Quartet

Spectacular start in the Freylinghausen Chamber

Even the opening gesture is part of the programme. When the New Zealand String Quartet walked on to the stage of the gratifyingly full Freylinghausen Chamber and instead of sitting down, set up the instruments in a standing position, the audience already had an inkling of the vitality and playfulness of these four musicians from Wellington. Mendelssohn’s expressive “Capriccio” opened the evening. Then Helene Pohl (1st violin) said a few words to prepare the audience for Dmitri Shostakovich’s shatteringly gloomy and depressing eleventh string quartet.

Encounter with death
The viola then set off with breathtaking poise. The four musicians maintained eye contact the whole time they were playing the grating notes. With energetic resolve, they interpreted Shostakovich’s tonal expression of an encounter with death. Even though the tragic underlying mood threatened to crush the audience, the intent alertness and physicality of the quartet kept them from dwelling too deeply on morbid thoughts.

The eagerly awaited composition for string quartet and whale bone instruments “Puhake ki te rangi” by New Zealander Gillian Whitehead traces the sound of the Pacific underworld. Richard Nunns joined the quartet as a guest for this piece. He is one of New Zealand’s most respected musicians and foremost interpreter of traditional Maori music.

Greetings to the spirits
Before he picked up the percussion instrument “tumutumu”, made out of the toothed lower jaw of a whale, Nunns paid his respects – as the Maori language tradition dictates – “to the building, the deceased, the living and the musical instruments”. The string quartet offered a tonal carpet for Nunns’ subtle improvisations on whale bone flutes and trumpets and the “nguru” flute made from the cochlea of a whale.

The instruments aroused the curiosity of the audience, which Nunns hopefully increased by responding to questions during the interval. Schubert’s String Quartet in G Major, with its romantic gestures, provided a good contrast to the first half of the programme, and the New Zealand String Quartet extracted the maximum from their strings in the dynamic arm movement accompanying the final chord.

This wonderful opening evening now has everyone looking forward to the next concert in the series of “Music Hour” on 6 November, featuring renowned clarinettist, Sabine Meyer.