Search Music:

String Quartet No.2 was composed in Devonport, Auckland, between November 1994 and February 1995 with financial assistance provided by the New Zealand Composers’ Foundation and the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa (now Creative New Zealand). The first performance was given at the Watershed Theatre, Auckland on the 10th March 1995 by Simon McLellan and Sarah Hart (violins), Judith Williams (cello) and with the composer as violist. Denys Trussell wrote in a subsequent review (Quote Unquote, April 1995): “Nigel Keay…had his substantial and dramatic Second Quartet given its first performances at these concerts. It is in part a synthesis of the strictly modernist and the freer post-modernist harmonic constructions: Keay is moving away from a music of sustained dissonance in this work towards a music where consonance and dissonance interact. The middle movement, slow and introspective, is a striking instance of this.”

Since then String Quartet No.2 has established itself as one of the composer’s most-performed, and most widely-performed works having been played in New Zealand, Thailand, Japan, France and Germany by several different formations. It was also performed at the 17th Conference and Festival of the Asian Composers League in Bangkok by the Ensemble Contemporary Alpha (Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music), and at the ‘Stella Nova’ Concerts in Tokyo. It has been performed also in NZ by Ensemble Philharmonia (members of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra), and the Nevine String Quartet with recording and broadcast by Radio NZ’s Concert FM. It received performances in 2004 and 2005 by the Quatuor Aphan’s in Paris and Germany.

In three movements, following a fast-slow-fast format, the quartet contains Arabic flavoured melodies over fast syncopations in the first movement, with a slow reflective second movement pointing to the composers love of the medium, particularly as a player having experienced the late quartets of Beethoven. Essentially an abstract work, the quartet ends with a rhythmically driving and brilliant third movement.

• Keay: String Quartet No. 2; computer-set 

  Parts - written | Pdf - computer set
  

• Keay: String Quartet No. 2; computer-set 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  

• Keay: String Quartet No.2; computer-set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  • Borrow

• Nigel Keay: String Quartet No.2; audio 

  Media on Demand | Embedded
  

• Music by Nigel Keay 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

• Keay - String Quartet No. 2 

  Cassette
  
  • Borrow

• Nigel Keay: Works 

  Cassette
  
  • Borrow

• Nigel Keay: Music for Small Groups  Year: 2011 

  CD
  
  $20.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

Scored for violin and cello this work has been dscribed as, “the most extended and dramatic composition on the album… This extraordinary work is a tour de force for violin and cello, rivettingly performed by Douglas Beilman and James Tennant.” Oliver Stead, Music in NZ “This is a powerful work, an angry work even, from the shuddering, shifting harmonies of the opening tremolo to a cello cadenza of almost Slavic intensity, and the recurring percussive effects the composer demands of her players.” William Dart, Music in NZ.

• de Castro-Robinson: Tumbling Strains; facsimile 

  Full score | Pdf - facsimile
  
  $8.00
  • • Quantity:

• de Castro-Robinson: Tumbling Strains; facsimile 

  Full score | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  $8.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• de Castro-Robinson: Tumbling Strains; facsimile 

  Full score | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  • Borrow

• de Castro Robinson: Tumbling Strains  

  Digital sound file - MP3
  
  $7.00
  • • Quantity:

• Preview - a journey to Olympus, and beyond 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

• De Castro-Robinson: Triple Clarinet Concerto and other works 

  Cassette
  
  • Borrow

• Different Tracks  Year: 1993 

  CD
  
  $30.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• A Chaos of Delight: music by Eve de Castro-Robinson  Year: 1998 

  CD
  
  • Borrow