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Ottawa Citizen,
July 2008
Worcester
Telegram & Gazette, November 2007
Lexington Herald
Leader, November 2007
Washington Post, November
2007
Classics Today (CD review),
September 2007
Minneapolis
Star-Tribune, November 2005
Sunday, October 17, 2004
Quartet hits high note for new season
By Laura Stewart
News-Journal Fine Arts Writer
DAYTONA BEACH The New Zealand String
Quartet set a fine tone for the fresh cultural season Friday with its
wide-ranging, profoundly nuanced Central Florida Cultural Endeavors
concert.
Violinist Helena Pohl was a powerhouse in Beethoven’s String Quartet in B
flat major, Opus 18, No. 6, a massive work that allowed the four musicians
from Victoria University in Wellington to revel in their classical roots.
Gossamer without being merely glossy, the string quartet’s intricate sonic
patterns explored the depths of human emotions crisply, tenderly and,
always, with great subtlety. In the able hands of Pohl and her colleagues
( violinist Douglas Beilman, violist Gillian Ansell and cellist Rolf
Gjelsten) Hugo Wolf’s "Italian Serenade" was a jaunty, exquisitely paced
romantic idyll. Its ornate passages skipped and spun, celebrating both
Wolf’s eloquent ballad to the beloved and the New Zealand quartet’s
absolute mastery of its frolicking love-drunk recitatives.
One of the program’s highlights came next, and won the full attention of
the near-capacity audience at Our Lady of Lourdes Church. In keeping with
the quartet’s goal of bringing New Zealand music to the world, the
musicians produced an amazing variety of exotic sounds and rhythms in
"Three Transcriptions."
The 1987 work by New Zealander Jack Body resonated with chords from China,
Madagascar and Bulgaria, played on contemporary strings that mimicked to
such ethnic instruments as the southern Chinese Long-ge, a Jew’s harp with
three metal blades. As exquisite as the classical and romantic pieces that
preceded them, "Transcriptions" opened doors on the traditions of remote
cultures.
Just so did the quartet’s performance of Bedrich Smetana’s emotionally
laden String Quartet No. 1 in E minor, the autobiographical "From My
Life", offer more than enjoyment. The string quartet brilliantly and
achingly, expresses his devastation at his loss in what Smetana called "a
tone-picture of my life."
Introducing the work, violinist Beilman emphasized the work’s pathos;
performing it, the quartet explored the beauty of Smetana’s memories,
translated into music. The New Zealander’s presentation of "From My Life"
was warm, precise in every note, light and brisk.
It was, like the rest of the ensemble’s thoughtful, rich program, as near
to perfect as it surely is possible to get. Each work became a living
thing, constantly in the process of re-creation, serious and virtuosic.
The New York Times (11/12/03)
CLASSICAL MUSIC
Performers From Down Under, Along With Composers
New Zealand String Quartet
Frick Collection
When an ensemble visits from a distant land it is a de facto emissary of
that country's musical culture. So it made good sense that the New Zealand
String Quartet, in its New York debut on Sunday afternoon at the Frick
Collection, chose to intersperse two works by New Zealand composers with
standard repertory by Bartok and Beethoven.
The first was by John Psathas, "Abhisheka," which was inspired by a
Buddhist text and, as the audience was told, represents the composer's
attempt to write music free of ego. One might imagine that such music
could also be called silence, but this was not the case. Rather, the ego
for Mr. Psathas is apparently connected to the traditional division of the
octave into 12 notes.
It was this division that he clearly renounced for this intriguing work,
full of microtones that helped produce a haze of quiet sustained chords,
drifting in and out of aural focus, while solo gestures crested above the
blurry bed of sound. The quartet's command of intonation - the key to such
a piece - was impressive, though the occasional use of vibrato seemed a
strange choice in a work that relied on such careful manipulation of
minute intervals. "Abhisheka" left a stronger impression than Jack Body's
"Three Transcriptions," based on recordings of a Jew's harp from southern
China, a zither from Madagascar and a Bulgarian folk orchestra. As is
often the case, dressing up Western instruments in ethnic garb, however
bright and creative the costumes may be, did little other than whet the
appetite for hearing the originals.
Between the works by their compatriots, the New Zealanders played Bartok's
wartime Second String Quartet, staking out a respectable stylistic middle
ground that acknowledged the music's astringency but also its unlikely
lyricism. Of course, Bartok also used folk materials, but he mostly
avoided mimicry and instead integrated them into his sophisticated
modernist idiom.
Beethoven's wonderful Quartet Opus 59, No. 1, completed the program. The
group had not quite mastered the tricky acoustics of the rounded Frick
performance space, and the balances sometimes faltered, but the playing
was generally fluid and energetic, rising up to a few moments of uncommon
eloquence.
Jeremy Eichler
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