The Goldner String Quartet from Australia plays a programme of "life-affirming, optimistic and cheerful" music.
Goldner String Quartet: Dene Olding, Irina Morozova, Julian Smiles, Dimity Hall Photo: Keith Saunders Photography
The Goldner Quartet is Australia’s most celebrated string quartet and they are regular visitors to New Zealand.
In this programme for Chamber Music New Zealand, as well as quartets by the two Romantic masters, Mendelssohn and Dvořák, they play music from their own country by Ross Edwards and music of our own country by Gareth Farr.
The members of the quartet are violinists Dene Olding and Dimity Hall, violist Irina Morozova, and cellist Julian Smiles.
Gareth FARR: Te Kōanga
A work written in memory of the Wellington luthier Ian Lyons, who died unexpectedly in 2015.
As well as a musician and instrument maker, Ian was a nature and outdoors man. Farr says that this piece is not a lament for Ian – rather, a joyous celebration of the things that were most important to him.
Te Kōanga translates as “Spring” or “Planting season”
MENDELSSOHN: String Quartet No 1 in E flat Op 12
This was Mendelssohn's first published quartet (though not the first written), written when he was 20.
It’s thought that he wrote the work dedicated to Betty Pistor who was a neighbour and close friend of the Mendelssohn family. She was a singer and this quartet is very song-like all the way through.
Ross EDWARDS: White Cockatoo Spirit Dance
In the 1980s Australian composer Ross Edwards wrote a series pieces under a general title, maninya. It’s a word that he made up but it took on a meaning for him – a description of the characteristic music he was writing: chant-like, harmonically static but with obsessive dancing rhythms.
White Cockatoo Spirit Dance was not part of the original maninya series, but it shares those characteristics.
Edwards wrote it originally for solo viola, but has produced a few other versions, each with a subtly different effect, including this one for string quartet.
DVORAK: String Quartet No 12 in F Op 96, "American"
Dvorak lived in the United States from 1892 to 1895 where he was the director of the National Conservatory of Music. In 1893, he spent the summer in Spillville, Iowa – a Czech-speaking community where his secretary Josef Jan Kovařík was from.
While there, he wrote this Quartet and like the New World Symphony and other works from this American period, it draws inspiration from the folk music that he had become acquainted with, especially from the American Indian and Black American peoples.
Peter SCULTHORPE: Hill Song 2
As an encore, the quartet plays a piece by Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe, in which he looks back to his childhood in Tasmania - to a time when things were a bit simpler.
Recorded by RNZ Concert
Sound Engineer: Adrian Hollay
Producer: Tim Dodd
