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Helen Fisher  

String Quartet

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1994
for string quartet

  • Programme Note

    This string quartet is performed as one movement. The first section is predominantly contrapuntal, including the opening bars where each performer sings ‘Aue’ (meaning ‘Alas!’, a Maori acclamation in some waiata tangi). The work continues with a section which features solo cello, followed by dance and song-like sections.

    Much of the work is based on the intervals of a minor third, semitone and tone. Karanga, Maori song-calls, performed by women on the marae to welcome or farewell people, are one source of inspiration for this piece. A characteristic musical feature of karanga is a long drawn out cry (glissando). Since there is often more than one caller on the marae, it is not uncommon for the calls to overlap.

    In October 1994 the New Zealand String Quartet gave its premiere performance at Lower Hutt. It is described as “quite probably the most successful synthesis of the contemporary Maori and European sound worlds.” Dominion 16-9-95.

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Ray Twomey  

String Quartet (Opus 11b)

Duration: 18' 00" Year: 1997
for string quartet

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  • Programme Note

    This work is the string quartet version of Sinfonia, opus 11a, and is a musical autobiography. Ray was born in England and lived through seven years of destruction, spending many nights in air raid shelters listening to the sounds of total war. An air raid, with its sirens, the drone of bombers, bombs dropping and anti-aircraft fire can be heard in the first movement. The main theme, which occurs soon after the opening, reappears inverted after the air raid – symbolic of the utter chaos prevalent at that time. However, like the Phoenix rising from the ashes, the theme not only corrects itself but changes from minor to major modality near the end. The second movement represents New Zealand with its bitter-sweet memories for the composer. New Zealand is a beautiful country. The humorous third movement, called “England again” is scored pizzicato throughout, and leads to the final movement “Canada” – big Canada, magnificent Canada, vast Canada, noble Canada, free Canada, beautiful Canada…. the huge but simple harmonies near the end are Ray’s interpretation of the optimism he feels for the country.

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Nigel Keay  

String Quartet No. 2

Duration: 17' 00" Year: 1995
string quartet

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    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.

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Gillian Whitehead  

The Journey of Matuku Moana

Duration: 18' 00" Year: 1992
for solo cello

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Eve de Castro-Robinson  

Tumbling Strains

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1992
for violin and cello

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