Chamber Music New Zealand Presents

1New Zealand String Quartet with James Campbell

The Auckland concert is being recorded for broadcast by Radio NZ Concert

Brahms Clarinet Quintet in B minor Opus 115 5

The Travelling Portmanteau:A collection of portable vignettes for string quartet 6

Karlo Margetić Sinnet Tabea Squire Jet-Lag Natalie Hunt Matariki Data Entry Groove

Interval

Mozart Quintet in A for clarinet and strings K581 8

Palmerston North 5 MayChristchurch 7 May Dunedin 11 MayAuckland 12 MayNapier 15 May

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.

ProgrammeWelcome

Welcome to this evening’s concert, which features some of the most beautiful chamber music ever written plus a wee taste of some brand new music by several of our most talented emerging Kiwi composers.

Both the Brahms and Mozart clarinet quintets rank in the Top 10 chamber music masterpieces and it is a pleasure to combine the New Zealand String Quartet with their good friend Canadian clarinettist James Campbell to present this sublime music. These fi ve musicians have played together frequently in the past in Canada and America, and following this tour they will record the Brahms as part of a Naxos project.

Again, thank you for joining us and now I invite you to sit back, relax and be transported.

Euan MurdochChief ExecutiveChamber Music New Zealand

2 Chamber Music New Zealand

James Campbell clarinet

James Campbell has been described as ‘Canada’s pre-eminent clarinettist and wind soloist’ by the Toronto Star, and has been performing in major concert venues and festivals around the world since the mid-1970s. He has taught at Indiana University for more than 25 years, and been Artistic Director of the annual Festival of the Sound for nearly 30 years.

As a chamber musician James Campbell has worked with leading pianists, including Glenn Gould and Menahem Pressler, and with more than 30 string quartets, including the Amadeus, Fine Arts and St Lawrence Quartets. His 1992 recording of the Brahms Clarinet

Quintet with the Allegri Quartet was chosen by BBC Radio 3 as the best available, and with that same group he won a Juno Award in 1986 for a recording of lighter classics.

James Campbell has been performing with the New Zealand String Quartet for more than eleven years, and will shortly be recording the Brahms Clarinet Quintet with them.

He has also collaborated with jazz pianist Gene DiNovi since 1984, and in 2010 became a founding member of the group Spirit 20, formed to present jazz and classical music from the 1920’s.

3New Zealand String Quartet with James Campbell

The New Zealand String Quartet is the foremost chamber ensemble in this country, and the most-travelled classical group. Formed by Chamber Music New Zealand in 1987, the Quartet regularly visits both large and small centres in New Zealand. They also perform internationally each year, and are regular guests at Canada’s Festival of the Sound, where they have worked with James Campbell.

As teachers, members of the Quartet conduct the annual Adam Summer School for young chamber musicians, and are Quartet-in-Residence at the New Zealand School of Music in Wellington. In 2013 the New Zealand String Quartet took up a residency at the

China Conservatory in Beijing, as part of a collaboration with the Forbidden City Chamber Orchestra and composers from both New Zealand and China. The resulting concert was performed in Beijing in 2013 and New Zealand this year.

The New Zealand String Quartet’s extensive list of recordings includes a three volume set of Mendelssohn’s complete works for string quartet, and a disc of New Zealand quartets, featuring works by John Psathas, Jack Body, Ross Harris, Gareth Farr and Michael Norris. Their most recent CDs are of music by Asian composers (including Gao Ping), and of the Schubert Quartet in G D887.

New Zealand String Quartet Helene Pohl violinDouglas Beilman violinGillian Ansell violaRolf Gjelsten cello

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5New Zealand String Quartet with James Campbell

Johannes BrahmsBorn Hamburg, 7 May 1833Died Vienna, 3 April 1897

Clarinet Quintet in B minor Opus 115AllegroAdagioAndantinoCon moto

Brahms began his musical career as a pianist and teacher, giving his fi rst solo concert at the age of fi fteen. In 1853, at the age of twenty, he embarked on an extensive tour with the Hungarian violinist Eduard Reményi and during their travels Brahms was introduced to another virtuoso violinist, Joseph Joachim. Joachim became a life-long friend and colleague and Brahms wrote several works (including the Violin Concerto) for him. At Joachim’s instigation, Brahms presented his compositions to Robert and Clara Schumann that year. As a result, Robert Schumann praised him highly in a published article, bringing Brahms to the attention of the European music-loving public.

In the period 1880-85, the Meiningen Orchestra was conducted by one of Brahms’ champions, Hans von Bulow. Brahms came to know and love the playing of the orchestra’s clarinettist, Richard Mühlfeld, describing him as “the nightingale of the orchestra”.

Brahms possibly started work on a clarinet quintet as early as 1888, but it wasn’t until 1891 that he completed both the Clarinet Trio Opus 114 and the Clarinet Quintet Opus 115, with both works premièred later that year by Mühlfeld, Brahms and the Joachim Quartet. One commentator wrote of the performance: “This dialogue between the violin and the clarinet cannot be forgotten by any who had the happiness of hearing the Quintet interpreted with Joachim and Mühlfeld in these parts. The clarinetist seemed to express in the pianissimo phrase the inmost secrets of the human heart in a mood of passionate rapture”.

From the beginning of the Quintet there are reminders that Brahms saw himself as coming to the end of his creative life – he had decided to retire as a composer in 1890 but was inspired to write again by Mühlfeld’s playing. A sense of nostalgia imbues the work through a combination of the melancholic tone Brahms elicits from the clarinet, and his fondness for melodic development, which sees the opening material recalled as a basis for themes in all four movements.

After the opening sonata form Allegro, notable for its blending of the instrumental sounds, the Adagio second movement gives the clarinet a starring role, allowing the player to exploit the instrument’s full variety of tone colours. The fi nal two movements are lighter in mood and relatively short, though long enough for the Con moto to demonstrate Brahms’ penchant for the variation form, with the initial theme in violin followed by fi ve elaborated versions.

6 Chamber Music New Zealand

Karlo Margetić SinnetTabea Squire Jet-LagNatalie Hunt Matariki Data Entry Groove

The Travelling Portmanteau is a project initiated by the New Zealand String Quartet and funded by Creative New Zealand. The Quartet wanted fresh new works that they could either use as encore pieces or perform as a set, in response to frequent queries from overseas concert promoters about their latest New Zealand repertoire. The Quartet also wished to support emerging composers and chose four – Simon Eastwood, Natalie Hunt, Karlo Margetić and Tabea Squire – to work with.

Tonight’s selection was given its première in March this year, and the full set will be recorded and fi lmed for uploading to the ‘media on demand’ facility on the SOUNZ website.

Karlo Margetić (born 1987) graduated in both composition and clarinet from the NZ School of Music and is currently Emerging Composer-in-Residence with Orchestra Wellington. Previous composer residencies he has held include the NZSO National Youth Orchestra (2007) and the Auckland Philharmonia (2007 and 2008). In 2006 he received the NZSO/Todd Young Composer Award, and while at school he twice won the NZCT Chamber Music Contest. Three of his orchestral works have been selected for the NZSO-SOUNZ Readings workshops (in 2009, 2011 and 2013), and in 2013 he was also chosen to attend a composition workshop with Bright Sheng at Hong Kong University.

His music has been commissioned and performed by leading groups including STROMA, Auckland Chamber Orchestra, Wellington Youth Orchestra, and NZ Trio. He is a founder and co-director of the contemporary group SMP Ensemble, with whom he also performs.

“A sinnet (or sennit) is braided cordage made by plaiting strands of rope fi bre, or similar material. It has various forms and uses, including ornamentation, structural lashing in simple buildings and making hats.”

The Travelling Portmanteau:A collection of portable vignettes for string quartet

7New Zealand String Quartet with James Campbell

Tabea Squire (born 1989) began playing the violin at the age of six, and writing music at ten. In 2006 she won the composition section of the NZCT Chamber Music Contest as well as the Big Sing Composition Competition, and in 2008 was Composer-in-Residence for the NZSO National Youth Orchestra. Her music has been chosen for the NZSO/Todd Young Composer workshops, and performers of her works include the Early Music Union, Wellington Chamber Orchestra, Manawatu Sinfonia and Hawkes Bay Orchestra. In 2013 she participated in the exchange programme between the New Zealand String Quartet and Forbidden City Chamber Orchestra, and her music was performed in Beijing and around New Zealand.

“Jet-lag, a light-hearted work, started with the thought of what jet-lagged music might sound like. It explores purposeful disunity within the quartet, featuring a certain amount of slapstick when separate parts head off in diff erent directions, or are hard-headedly sticking to their own key. For reasons which once made sense and now are very obscure, there is also an unexpected explosion of endemic birdsong.”

Natalie Hunt (born 1985) studied piano and clarinet, and also has a background in theatre and jazz. She has degrees in political science from Victoria University and in composition from the NZ School of Music. In 2009 she was appointed Composer-in-Residence with the NZSO National Youth Orchestra during their 50th anniversary, and also won the NZSO/Todd Young Composer Award. In 2012 her work Compass was chosen for the NZSO-SOUNZ Readings.

“Matariki refers to the Maori New Year celebration, heralded by the dawn appearance of the Pleiades constellation. While writing Matariki I was struck by two things: fi rstly, how often it rains at dawn, and secondly, how easy it is to stay in bed on the occasions when the weather is fi ne, though somewhat frosty. Given the (fortunately) cyclical nature of Matariki, it seemed appropriate to base this work around a harmonic ostinato. I was also interested in the signifi cance of the Pleiades to other cultures around the world.”

“Data Entry Groove was written while I was working as a Logistical Support Offi cer with talented graduates from a variety of fi elds. It is a tongue in cheek salute to the jobs our day-personas endure, propped up by many ‘keep-cups’ of tea, and day dreams.”

8 Chamber Music New Zealand

Wolfgang Amadeus MozartBorn Salzburg, 27 January 1756Died Vienna, 5 December 1791

Quintet in A for clarinet and strings K581AllegroLarghettoMenuettoAllegretto con variazioni

In 1781 Mozart was thrown out of his job as organist and kapellmeister at the court of the Archbishop of Salzburg for insubordination – he did not appreciate being treated as a court servant – and he became a freelance composer and performer in Vienna, being particularly highly respected as a keyboard player. He had been boarding with the Weber family, and in 1782 Mozart married one of the daughters of the household, Constanze, with the grudging approval of his own father.

During the following years, Mozart enjoyed many successes as a composer, with his string quartets praised highly by Haydn, and the public fl ocking to concerts where he played his own piano concertos. In the second half of the decade he turned again to opera composition, and the resulting Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni became widely performed.

However, he was not earning enough from composition to support the lavish lifestyle he and Constanze had adopted, and was

forced to borrow money from friends until his income began to improve, shortly before his death. One of his loyal friends, and sometimes his touring companion, was the clarinettist Anton Stadler, of whom a contemporary critic wrote: “I would not have thought that a clarinet could imitate the human voice so deceptively”. Mozart wrote the ‘Kegelstatt’ trio to play with Stadler in 1786, then the Clarinet Quintet in 1789 and Clarinet Concerto in 1791.

The clarinet had only recently become standard in the orchestra and was still developing as an instrument, and both the Quintet and Concerto were actually written for the basset clarinet, a version with an added lower register. Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet was the fi rst major composition for that ensemble and inspired later works, including the Quintets by his wife’s cousin Carl Maria von Weber, and by a fellow Viennese immigrant, Johannes Brahms.

The opening movement has three distinct themes introduced by the strings and commented on by the clarinet, and a short central development section for the strings alone. The following Larghetto is one of Mozart’s most beautiful movements, resembling a refl ective aria in mood. Unusually, the Menuetto is accompanied by two trios, the fi rst for string quartet, and the second a simple folk-style song for the clarinet. The fi nal movement is a hopping theme with a set of fi ve variations, rounded off with a light-footed coda.

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Regional Presenters Blenheim, Cromwell, Gisborne, Gore, Hutt Valley, Kaitaia, Kerikeri, Morrinsville, Motueka, Rotorua, Taihape, Tauranga, Te Awamutu, Tokoroa, Upper Hutt, Waikanae, Waimakariri, Waipukurau, Wanaka, Wanganui, Warkworth, Wellington, Whakatane and Whangarei.

Staff Chief Executive, Euan MurdochBusiness Manager, Jenni HallBusiness Support Co-ordinator, Sue JaneOperations Co-ordinator, Jessica LightfootOffi ce Administrator, Anna EdgingtonArtist Development Manager, Catherine GibsonProgramme Co-ordinator (Contest), Pip WantProgramme Writer, Jane Dawson Audience Development Manager, Victoria DaddMarketing & Communications Co-ordinator, Candice de VilliersTicketing & Database Co-ordinator, Laurel BruceDesign & Print, Chris McDonaldEvent Co-ordinator, Keriata RoyalPublicist, Sally Woodfi eld

BoardChair, Roger King; Paul Baines, Peter Diessl, Gretchen La Roche, Helen Philpott, Michelle van Gaalen, Peter Walls, Lloyd Williams.

© Chamber Music New Zealand 2014 No part of this programme may be reproduced without the prior permission of Chamber Music New Zealand.

Regional Concerts & Other Events

Buz Bryant-Greene (piano)Kaitaia, 18 MayBlenheim, 23 MayCromwell, 25 May

The Troubles ( jazz band)Lower Hutt, 4 JuneWanaka, 6 JuneRangiora, 8 June

La Belle Alliance (soprano/violin/piano)Gore, 8 JuneWhangarei, 15 June

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