Cellist Rolf Gjelsten with the NZSQ Photo: supplied
This concert was given as part of a National Tour which had originally been planned for the second half of 2021. It finally took place in April 2022.
The venue is the Jubilee Hall, a delightful little room within the Parnell Community Centre in Auckland. The distinctive Jubilee Building on Parnell Road was built in 1908 and many know it as the home of the Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind. But the Blind Foundation moved out some years ago and now, as well as providing a number of event venues, it houses the Parnell Public Library.
The group opens with a Mozart quartet. This is one of six quartets that Mozart wrote on commission for King Frederick William II of Prussia. Frederick was a cellist, so Mozart oomphed up the cello parts in his honour ... you’ll notice Rolf on the cello taking several prominent solos.
Louise Webster writes of this memory of earth:
"Our earliest memories of the land shape who we are, who we become. Early experiences are stored as implicit memory, formed before conscious recollection is possible, but remembered by our bodies, our senses, our emotional responses as we move though life. At a time when our world is under such threat, these threads of memory nudge us, reminding us of what we must hold, treasure, reclaim, rebuild; the smell of rain, the coolness of shadow beneath trees, the pull of the sea, the cry of a bird in the night.
"This quartet too is built of recurring snatches of melody, rhythmic fragments, overlapping textures and abrupt interruptions, interwoven and accumulating throughout the course of the work."
The words of the title come from Fields in Midsummer by New Zealand poet, Ruth Dallas.
The work was commissioned by the New Zealand String Quartet and first performed in May 2020.
Shostakovich's 11th Quartet, like all his string quartets, is a very personal work. It is dedicated to the memory of Vassily Shirinsky, the second violinist of the Beethoven Quartet, who had recently died.
Shirinsky and the others of the Quartet were possibly Shostakovich's closest colleagues — they had premiered all of his quartets up to this point bar the first. The loss of Shirinsky was a devastating blow to them all and it was not certain that the Quartet could continue. The did however and Shostakovich dedicated his next three quartets to the other members.
Mendelssohn's String Quartet No 2 is a remarkably mature work written by the then 18-year old composer.
The poor young man was experiencing the first pangs of love at the time and he wrote his song 'Frage' to express his feelings.
"Is it true that you always wait for me there in the leafy path by the vineyard and ask the moonlight and the little stars about me? Is it true? What I feel can only be understood by someone who feels it with me, and who will stay forever true to me."
And his quartet written straight afterwards owes a lot to this song as well as to his deep study of Beethoven's late string quartets.
The three-note motif to which Mendelssohn set the words "Ist es wahr" (Is it true?) in the song appears throughout the quartet.
Recorded by RNZ Concert
Producer: Tim Dodd
Engineer: Adrian Hollay
