1Behn Quartet

Behn Quartet

Chamber Music New Zealand presents

Core Funder

Touring NZ 14 April – 1 May 2018

BEHN QUARTETCHAMBER MUSIC NEW ZEALAND presents

Friday 20 April, 7.30pm Globe Theatre Palmerston North

Tuesday 24 April, 7.30pm Nelson Centre for Musical Arts

Friday 27 April, 7.30pm Civic Theatre Invercargill*

For Regional Series tour information see page 8.

DVOŘÁK | String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, op. 96 (“American”) Pg 3JACK BODY | Three Transcriptions Pg 4

Interval

RAVEL | String Quartet in F Major Pg 5

Duration: 100 minutes – including interval.

Southland Arts Festival* Presented in association with

Please respect the music, the musicians, and your fellow audience members, by switching off all cellphones, pagers and watches. Taking photographs, or sound or video recordings during the concert is strictly prohibited unless with the prior approval of Chamber Music New Zealand.

Kia ora tātouWe are pleased to present the Behn Quartet (named after the 17th- century writer Aphra Behn) during the 125th anniversary year of women’s suffrage in New Zealand. That’s a happy coincidence, though. We didn’t go looking for an all-women quartet. We did, though, take a special interest in these talented young musicians who all met at the Royal Academy of Music. Kate Oswin, the first violin, is a New Zealander who grew up in Christchurch and studied at the New Zealand School of Music before heading to London. She and her friends are making quite an impression. It was good to see them last year in a Wigmore Hall coaching session with the Takács Quartet. It will be even better to hear them live.

During this tour, the Behn Quartet will give the opening concert in the newly-refurbished Nelson School of Music Auditorium (part of the Nelson Centre of Musical Arts). We have been hanging out for this. For the past few years, while the Nelson School of Music was closed for earthquake strengthening, CMNZ concerts

have been in Old St John’s Church – which is fine acoustically but challenging on cold nights. Audiences and artists alike will delight in once again being able to experience chamber music in such a beautiful, safe and comfortable space. And now it that superb concert venue is surrounded by new and upgraded facilities of an exceptional standard.

I would like to congratulate and thank all of those in Nelson who have worked so hard to bring this about.

Continuing down the country, we are also proud once again to be part of the vibrant Southland Arts Festival. Now supporting over 40 events, we've admired how much it's grown since 2009.

Peter WallsChief ExecutiveMusic Up Close | Puoro TaupiriChamber Music New Zealand

KATE OSWIN & ALICIA BERENDSE, violins LYDIA ABELL, viola GHISLAINE MCMULLIN, cello

The Behn Quartet is formed of players from New Zealand, the Netherlands, England, and Wales. Winners of the Charles Hennen First Prize at the Orlando International Chamber Music Competition 2017, they currently hold the CAVATINA Chamber Music Fellowship at the Royal Academy of Music in London. They take their name from Aphra Behn, the seventeenth-century playwright, political activist, and philanthropist of the arts.

Since their formation in 2015 the Behn Quartet have given recitals around Europe, including at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam, in association with Dimore del Quartetto, and at Wigmore Hall with thanks to the Maisie Lewis Young Artists' Award. They gave the world premiere of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ final work at his Memorial Concert in St John’s Smith Square and live on BBC Radio 3, and have recorded chamber works by Maxwell Davies, Stravinsky and Birtwistle for Linn Records. The Behn Quartet were also part of

the official 40th Anniversary celebrations of Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, performing a specially-commissioned ‘reimagination’ of the iconic song featured in news outlets worldwide, and praised by Rolling Stone Magazine as ‘a sweeping performance as grand as the original’.

The Behn Quartet currently study with Christoph Richter and David Waterman on the ChamberStudio masterclass scheme at Kings Place London, and have performed for the Takács Quartet in a masterclass on Beethoven at Wigmore Hall. Future engagements include their Concertgebouw debut as part of the Orlando Competition Winner’s Tour in the Netherlands, and a performance of Mendelssohn Octet as part of their Residency at the Wiltshire Music Centre with the Doric Quartet.

The Behn Quartet are generously supported by Help Musicians UK, the De Lancey & De La Hanty Foundation, and the CAVATINA Chamber Music Trust. The Quartet plays instruments and bows kindly on loan by the Royal Academy of Music and Hurwitz Fine Instruments.

2 Chamber Music New Zealand

BEHN QUARTET

For all the verve and theatricality of Dvořák’s folk music melodies, an underlying sense of profundity makes String Quartet No.12 a work to which you can keep returning.

Dvořák, with Smetana and Janáček, is

considered a principal composer of the

nationalist movement in what was to

eventually become The Czech Republic.

Of the three, Dvořák’s music has had an

enduring effect on synthesising traditional

Czech folk traditions (and folk traditions

Dvořák heard elsewhere) and western

symphonic genres.

After a thorough musical upbringing and

study at the Prague Organ School, Dvořák

spent nine years as an orchestral violist,

performing a wide range of orchestral and

operatic repertoire, mostly under Smetana’s

directorship. In 1873, Dvořák received

the Austrian National Prize for his Third

Symphony, impressing a panel that included

Johannes Brahms. Dvořák won the prize

a second time two years later, leading to

several commissions – among them a violin

concerto for Brahms’ friend and virtuoso

Joseph Joachim. In 1891 Dvořák became a

professor at the Prague Conservatory, then

a year later was invited to direct the National

Conservatory of Music in New York.

Dvořák’s most notable works from the three

years he spent in the USA are the Ninth

Symphony (“From the New World”) and the

String Quartet No. 12 (“American”). In these

works, he draws on both the American folk

traditions he had newly discovered and his

intense feelings of homesickness. Despite

modelling the opening theme on Smetana’s

first quartet, Dvořák’s melody appears to

also convey the ebullient freshness of the

American folk tunes he adopted, blurring

the colours of nationalistic material in this

context. Some of the nostalgia-heavy

second movement carries into the third

movement, but retreats from the spontaneity

of springing folk interludes.

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841—1904)

String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, op. 96 (“American”) (1893)I. Allegro ma non troppoII. LentoIII. Molto vivaceIV. Finale: vivace ma non troppo

3Behn Quartet

27 minutes

Three Transcriptions illustrates Jack Body’s interpretive intelligence as he transforms sound across genres, highlighting in equal measure the closeness and distance of diverse musical cultures.

As a kind of musical translation, transcription inevitably invites interpretation and recreation of an original sound. Each movement of Three Transcriptions shares a dialogue between the distinct musical traditions Jack Body encountered around the world on one hand, and, on the other, the string quartet as part of the western art music tradition. He held a life-long fascination for Asian music and culture, particularly of China and Indonesia, and undertook fieldwork in both countries. Body’s travels in China to record folk music in 1986 led him to compose the first movement of Three Transcriptions, “Long-ge”. The movement transforms music originally

played on a Chinese Jew’s (or jaws) harp in the Yi nationality of Southwest China. “Ramandriana”, the following movement, reimagines Maroranzana, from Madagascar playing bamboo tube zithers called valiha, in this setting for string quartet. The third movement, “Ratschenita”, brings to life an excited 7/8 dance by the Varna Folk dance Group from the Shops area of Bulgaria.

After studies in Auckland, Cologne and Utrecht, Body spent a year as a guest lecturer in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He returned to New Zealand in the late 1970s and, from 1980, taught and composed at Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Music for thirty years. Here he built strong cross-cultural connections not only in his teaching and compositions, but also by initiating programmes for traditional musicians to work collaboratively with staff and students. Body wrote Three Transcriptions for the Kronos Quartet in 1988, and credited the work as giving him his ‘break’.

JACK BODY (1944—2015)

Three Transcriptions (1988)I. Long-ge (China)II. Ramandriana (Madagascar)III. Ratschenita (Bulgaria)

4 Chamber Music New Zealand

15 minutes

Pairing Ravel’s multiplicity of ideas and imaginative, yet controlled tonal language makes plain why this String Quartet has become a favourite in the repertoire.

Perhaps surprisingly, Ravel dedicated his String Quartet to Gabriel Fauré, his teacher at the conservatoire who found fault with this work: Fauré had dismissed Ravel from his composition classes for failing to win a prize for the first movement, and believed the last movement too short and unbalanced. Allegedly, however, Ravel’s near-contemporary Debussy, upon whose quartet Ravel modelled his own, provided reassurance and the encouragement such a self-confessed perfectionist probably needed.

Critics were divided after the Heymann Quartet premiered the work in Paris in 1904, and noted the similarities to Debussy’s music, which had itself received little critical attention at this point. Indeed, each

composer uses their opening theme as a base from which to create cohesion within the work. They developed their thematic material differently, however. While Debussy connects his movements with a single theme, Ravel creates an elusive cyclical thread that can be identified through its contour, rather than by rhythmic or melodic patterns. In the first movement Ravel uses a whole tone scale and tritone to colour his pastoral soundscape. The second movement disruptively layers plucking and bowing, forcing you to focus on the textures rather than follow the linear form. The third movement provides the clearest reference to the initial thematic material as the tempo rushes and subsides. The rhythmic drive and melodic leaps of “Vif et agité” bring the String Quartet to a dazzling end. Ravel melds innovative tonality into traditional forms, crafting orchestral colours that reveal his interests spanned from the atmospheric timbres of Javanese Gamelan he heard at the 1889 Paris World Fair, to the clarity of such French Baroque masters as Rameau.

MAURICE RAVEL (1875—1937)

String Quartet in F Major (1904)I. Allegro moderato – très douxII. Assez vif – très rythméIII. Très lentIV. Vif et agité

5Behn Quartet

35 minutes

Pubs. Parks. Street corners, stages. New York, London. Tonight, here.

Last month Anderson & Roe brought joy to thousands of concertgoers across Aotearoa with their dazzling performances. Now the inspirational women of Behn Quartet change up the tempo, their strings making hearts sing and setting toes tapping.

We want to bring more New Zealanders up close to this music, close enough to touch, with another year of award-winning Touch Tours and Audio Described concerts – personal encounters between musicians and the blind community who have not had the chance to experience music, quite like this.

"The students really enjoyed being able to hear what was happening as it was happening and the explanations of who and what they were wearing and all the little things that they never get to`see' they were told – they loved it." – JUDE SHELLEY

We need your support to present Music Up Close in 2018. Can you help share the joy?

Visit: chambermusic.co.nz/donatePhone: 04 802 0759Email: encore@chambermusic.co.nz

Photo: Andi Crown

MUSIC UP CLOSEHelp Share The Joy

Thank You!To all of our generous donors who support CMNZ throughout the year.

Founders' Circle MembersAnonymousGraeme EdwardsArnold and Reka SolomonsThe Estate of Jenni CaldwellThe Estate of Aileen ClaridgeThe Estate of Walter FreitagThe Estate of Chisne GunnThe Estate of Warwick Gordon HarrisThe Estate of Joan KerrThe Estate of Monica Taylor Ensemble ($10,000+)Anonymous Robin & Sue HarveyKaye & Maurice ClarkGill and Peter DavenportPeter and Carolyn DiesslProfessor Jack Richards

Octet ($5,000+)M Hirschfeld Children's TrustHylton LeGrice and Angela LindsayThe Lyons Family - in memory of Ian LyonsKerrin and Noel VautierLloyd Williams and Cally McWha

Quintet ($2,500+)Joy ClarkJohn and Trish GribbenAnn HardenJane KominikCollin PostArnold and Reka SolomonsPeter and Kathryn Walls Quartet ($1,000+)Anonymous (2)Donald and Susan BestRoger and Joanna BoothPhilip and Rosalind BurdonMD and MA CarrRick and Lorraine ChristieRoger ChristmasThe Cranfylde Charitable TrustPeter and Rae FehlFinchley TrustDame Jennifer GibbsPatricia GillionDavid and Heather HuttonLinda MacFarlane

Elizabeth McLeayRoger and Jenny MountfortBarbara PeddieRoger ReynoldsMartin and Catherine Spencer Basil & Jenny StantonAlison ThomsonAnn TrotterJudith TrotterAnna WilsonBruce Wilson and Jill WhiteAnn WylieDavid Zwartz

Trio ($500+)Anonymous (5)Diane BaguleyPhilippa BatesHarry and Anne BonningJD CullingtonJonathan CweorthGraeme and Di EdwardsHanno FairburnTom and Kay FarrarJohn FarrellAnne French Consulting LtdBelinda GalbraithPat GibsonLaurie GreigDouglas and Barbara HolborowE Prof Les HolborowMichael Houstoun and Mike NicolaidiCaroline ListFiona Macmillan and Briony MacmillanMargaret MalaghanRaymond and Helen MatiasAE McAloonAndrew and Mary McEwenShelley and Euan MurdochPrue OldeMiles RogersSylvia RosevearPeter and Juliet RoweJohn and Kathryn SinclairRoss SteelePriscilla TobinDavid TrippPatricia UngerRichard and Elaine WestlakeTim Wilkinson

Every gift of $5 or more is eligible for tax purposes and provides you with a tax credit, a receipt will be issued for tax deduction purposes.

7Behn Quartet

MUSIC UP CLOSEHelp Share The Joy

BranchesAuckland: Chair, Victoria Silwood; Concert Manager, Bleau BusteneraHamilton: Chair, Murray Hunt; Concert Manager, Gaye DuffillNew Plymouth: Concert Manager, Catherine MartinHawkes Bay: Chair, June Clifford; Concert Manager, Rhondda PoonManawatu: Chair, Graham Parsons; Concert Manager, Virginia Warbrick Wellington: Concert Manager, Rachel Hardie Nelson: Chair, Annette Monti; Concert Manager, Clare MontiChristchurch: Concert Manager, Jody KeehanDunedin: Chair, Terence Dennis; Concert Manager, Richard DingwallSouthland: Chair, Rosie Beattie; Concert Manager, Jennifer Sinclair

StaffChief Executive, Peter WallsArtistic Manager, Catherine GibsonArtistic Assistant, Jack HobbsEducation and Outreach Coordinator, Sue JaneOperations Coordinator, Rachel HardieDevelopment Manager, TBC Development Executive, Virginia CloseMarketing Manager, Shelley DavisDesign & Print Coordinator, Darcy WoodsMarketing Executive, Alessandra OrsiTicketing & Database Coordinator, Laurel BrucePublicity & Communications Executive, Anna van der Leij Office Administrator, Becky Holmes

BoardLloyd Williams (Chair), Quentin Hay, Gretchen La Roche, Bruce Phillips, Matthew Savage, Vanessa Van den Broek, Kerrin Vautier

Regional Presenters Marlborough Music Society Inc (Blenheim), Christopher's Classics (Christchurch), Cromwell & Districts Community Arts Council, Geraldine Academy of Performance & Arts, Musica Viva Gisborne, Music Society Eastern Southland (Gore) Arts Far North (Kaitaia), Aroha Music Society (Kerikeri), Chamber Music Hutt Valley, Motueka Music Group, Oamaru Opera House, South Waikato Music Society (Putaruru), Waimakariri Community Arts Council (Rangiora), Rotorua Music Federation, Taihape Music Group, Tauranga Musica Inc, Te Awamutu Music Federation, Upper Hutt Music Society, Waikanae Music Society, Wanaka Concert Society Inc, Chamber Music Wanganui, Warkworth Music Society, Wellington Chamber Music Trust, Whakatane Music Society, Whangarei Music Society.

Level 4, 75 Ghuznee Street PO Box 6238, Wellington0800 CONCERT (266 2378)

info@chambermusic.co.nzwww.chambermusic.co.nz

/ChamberMusicNZ

© Chamber Music New Zealand 2018 No part of this programme may be reproduced without the prior permission of Chamber Music New Zealand.

REGIONAL CONCERTS

BEHN QUARTET (violin, violin, viola, cello)

Kerikeri 14 April

Whangarei 15 April

Rotorua 18 April

Wellington 22 April

Upper Hutt 23 April

Cromwell 28 April

Christchurch 1 May

TORU (flute, viola, harp)

Motueka 9 May

Gore 13 May

Lower Hutt 16 May

Wanganui 17 May

Warkworth 19 May

Tauranga 20 May

Rotorua 22 May

Gisborne 25 May

MAZZOLI TRIO (violin, viola, cello)

Kerikeri 8 June

OL' KING COLE[piano, double bass, guitar]

Touring 12 – 27 June

A special thank you to all of our sponsors and funding partners.

THANK YOU

Bendigo Valley Charitable FoundationCommunity Trust of SouthlandDunedin City CouncilEastern & Central Community TrustFirst Light Community FoundationFour Winds FoundationInvercargill Licensing TrustJudith Clark Memorial Fund

Trust HouseTrust WaikatoTSB Community TrustTurnovsky Endowment TrustWellington City CouncilWellington Community TrustWinton & Margaret Bear Charitable Trust

Mt Wellington Foundation New Plymouth District CouncilOtago Community TrustPelorus TrustPub CharityRātā FoundationSouthern TrustThe Adam Foundation

National Touring Partners

Funding Partners

Core Funder Supporting Funder

National Business Partners

Regional Partners Education & Community Partners

Key Funding Partners CMNZ recognizes the following funders who generously support our work.

Pearls of Polyphony: Miraculous counterpoint from William Byrd to Bach

CHAMBER MUSIC NEW ZEALAND PRESENTS

For booking information visit

chambermusic.co.nz/phantasm0800 CONCERT (266 2378)

“The playing is quite simply divine.”— Gramophone Editor’s Choice

Touring NZ: 30 April – 6 May

Phantasm

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