Enso String Quartet

© Robert Catto | www.catto.co.nz | All rights reserved
Welcome
Thank you for joining us this evening for the
culmination of our 2012 concert season.
It’s our pleasure to cap off this year with
a collaboration between a dynamic young
ensemble based in New York, Enso String
Quartet, and Michael Endres, a wonderful
German pianist based in Christchurch.
Much of the music will be very familiar to
you, ranging from the Classical and Rococo
periods through to twentieth century works.
Tonight’s programme also includes a brand
new work, No stars, not even clouds, written
especially for the Enso Quartet by Dame
Gillian Karawe Whitehead.
We wish to acknowledge and thank the
Springload Web Design team who have
supported our work and dreams over the
past decade. If you haven’t already done so,
please admire their work on our website,
www.chambermusic.co.nz.
Enjoy, and we look forward to seeing you all
again in the New Year!
Euan Murdoch
Chief Executive,
Chamber Music New Zealand
Programme
Haydn
Quartet in C Opus 20 No 2
Page 4
Debussy
String Quartet in G minor
Page 5
INTERVAL
Gillian Whitehead
No stars, not even clouds ...
Page 7
Shostakovich
Piano Quintet in G minor Opus 57
Page 9
CHRISTCHURCH 23 OCTOBER
AUCKLAND 29 OCTOBER
NEW PLYMOUTH 26 OCTOBER
PALMERSTON NORTH 1 NOVEMBER
INVERCARGILL 7 NOVEMBER
The Auckland concert
will be broadcast live
by Radio NZ Concert
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.
Enso
String
Quartet
Maureen Nelson violin
John Marcus violin
Stephanie Fong viola
Richard Belcher cello
with
Kaleidoscopes 2012
Michael Endres piano
2.
The Enso String Quartet has had an
impressive career since it was formed in 1999
at Yale University, where Maureen Nelson and
Richard Belcher were studying. The group
won the Concert Artists Guild International
Competition in 2003, and was a prizewinner
at the Banff International String Quartet
Competition in 2004. A regular touring
schedule sees them performing in many of
the major concert halls throughout the USA,
including Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln Center
and the Library of Congress, and after this
visit to New Zealand they will be a quartet
in residence at the Huntington Estate Music
Festival in Australia.
Members of the Enso String Quartet are keen
teachers, and have developed programmes
for young people of all ages. They have held
residencies at Northern Illinois University
alongside the Vermeer Quartet, and at Rice
University, where they lectured in string
quartet playing. The Quartet has a strong
interest in contemporary music, and has
premièred works by leading composers
The Quartet’s first two solo recordings,
released in 2005-6, were a set of quartets
by Pleyel and received rave reviews. A 2009
CD of Ginastera quartets was selected
as a Recording of the Year by MusicWeb
International and nominated for a 2010
Grammy award.
Michael Endres has been a Professor of
Piano at Canterbury University since 2009,
and also has an international career as a solo
pianist. A graduate of the Juilliard School, he
has won numerous prizes in Europe, and his
recordings have won the Diapason d’Or three
times. He has been invited to perform at
major festivals throughout the world, and has
worked with chamber music partners such as
the baritone Hermann Prey, and the Artemis
and Fine Arts String Quartets. His 27 CDs
include music by Schubert, Weber,
Schumann and most recently Gershwin.
Enso String Quartet with Michael Endres
including Joan Tower. In 2009 they received
a Chamber Music America Commissioning
Grant to work with the composer Kurt
Stallman on his new quartet Following Franz,
Now, which was premièred in 2011.
3.
Joseph Haydn
Born Rohrau, Lower Austria, 31 March 1732 | Died Vienna, 31 May 1809
Quartet in C Opus 20 No 2
Moderato
Capriccio: Adagio
Minuetto: Allegretto
Fuga a quattro soggetti
Although Haydn did not invent the string
quartet, he was largely responsible for
developing and popularising the genre in
the late 18th century. His string quartets
were written over a span of nearly 50 years
of his creative life, and demonstrate Haydn’s
extraordinary growth as a composer and his
influence in the musical world.
Kaleidoscopes 2012
By 1772, when the six Opus 20 Quartets were
completed, Haydn had been in the service of
the imperial Esterhazy family for more than ten
years. As Kapellmeister, he was responsible for
the music and instruments of the household,
and for composing whatever his employer
Prince Nikolaus might require. This was mostly
orchestral works, operas and oratorios, and
there is no record of string quartets actually
being performed at the court. The terms of
Haydn’s contract forbade him from composing
for other patrons or publishing music without
permission, but despite these limitations his
international reputation blossomed from the
late 1760s.
4.
The Opus 20 set became known as the
‘Sun quartets’ due to a picture on the front
of the first publication, and they are in
many ways the dawn of a new era in string
quartet composition. Haydn departs from
the convention of the time by giving each
instrument a relatively equal role in the
texture, exemplified by his use of the cello to
open the Quartet in C. He was also influenced
by the new ‘Sturm und Drang’ [storm and
stress] movement, which sought to portray
extremes of emotion through music and
literature, in contrast to the ‘rational’ approach
typical of the late Baroque and early Classical
period. This new style can be heard to good
effect in the impassioned development section
of the first movement of this Quartet, as well
as the slow second movement, which opens
with a solemn unison statement in C minor.
In contrast to the usual courtly dance form,
the Minuetto draws on the sound of folk
instruments, with its drone-like texture,
though the central trio section is more
conventional in style. For the final movement,
Haydn turns to the contrapuntal techniques
of an earlier time with a double fugue. While
clearly another expression of instrumental
equality in the Quartet, the use of a more
‘learned’ style was another demonstration of
Haydn’s rejection of the lighter and simpler
‘Galante’ style that had prevailed for the past
forty years.
Claude Debussy
Born St Germain-en-Laye, 22 August 1862 | Died Paris, 25 March 1918
String Quartet in G minor Opus 10
Animé et très décidé
Assez vif et bien rythmé
Andantino, doucement
Très modéré
The String Quartet in G minor Opus 10 is
unique among Debussy’s works because it
is the only time he mentions a key or opus
number. Completed in February 1893, it
was first performed by the Ysaÿe Quartet in
December that year. The work was considered
a success and became a model for Ravel’s
famous Quartet a decade later. But critics
at the time found it puzzling and his close
friend and fellow composer Chausson was
very disappointed by it, causing Debussy
considerable distress. He planned a
second quartet to try and ease Chausson’s
disappointment, but that never eventuated.
Although based in the key of G minor, many of
Debussy’s themes are modal and the tonality
is treated with the utmost flexibility. He makes
extensive use of whole tone scales, which are
one of his most distinctive stylistic features.
Pentatonic (five note) scales also make an
appearance, particularly in the coda to the
first movement, which is marked ‘animated
and very purposefully’.
The colourful scherzo, Assez vif et très rythmé
[‘quite lively and very rhythmic’] uses pizzicato
as its basis, to form varied textures. The slow
Andantino, doucement [‘quite slowly, sweetly’]
is more lyrical and shows some Russian
influence in its sombre mood. By contrast,
the Très modéré [‘at a very moderate pace’]
finale is turbulent and chromatic. Following a
brief respite in the middle, the music builds to
a triumphant restatement of the main theme
from the beginning of the work.
Enso String Quartet with Michael Endres
From the time he was student at the Paris
Conservatoire, Debussy began to challenge
the accepted contemporary Wagnerian
compositional style that constantly stretched
harmonic boundaries, preferring to use ‘illegal’
sequences of chords to create sound-pictures:
“The only rule I admit is the rule that involves
pleasing a musician’s ear”. His quiet revolution
against late-Romanticism had a profound
effect on music in the 20th century and beyond,
allowing sounds and textures to be enjoyed for
their own sake rather than for their place in
the flow of harmony.
5.
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Want to hear more of the
Enso String Quartet?
Try the other programme!
Boccherini
Quartet in G minor Opus 32 No 5
Ginastera
Quartet No 1 Opus 20
Gillian Whitehead
No stars, not even clouds ...
Dvořák
Piano Quintet in A Opus 81
Wellington 25 October | Hamilton 28 October
Napier 31 October | Nelson 3 November
Dunedin 5 November
Or listen out for the broadcast by Radio NZ Concert
Gillian Karawe Whitehead
Born Whangarei, 23 April 1941
No stars, not even clouds ...
In 2000 the Arts Foundation of New Zealand
named her as one of five inaugural Arts
Laureates and her numerous other accolades
include three SOUNZ Contemporary Awards,
an Honorary Doctorate from Victoria University
(2003) and being made a Distinguished
Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit
(2008). As the inaugural composer at the
Lilburn Residence in Wellington, she was the
subject of a documentary that screened on
TV One in 2006, and in 2010 a biography
of her, ‘Moon, Tides and Shoreline’ by Noel
Sanders, was published.
The composer writes:
I wrote this piece at a time when several
friends were seriously ill, and at the forefront
of my mind. Juanita Ketchel, who lived in
Dunedin, was both diagnosed with cancer and
died within the short time-frame in which the
piece was written. A writer and oral historian,
she had a profound interest in the arts and
was frequently seen at Chamber Music New
Zealand concerts; the title, No stars, not even
clouds, comes from a story she wrote some
years ago. The piece is written to her memory.
The piece draws on traditional quartet forms,
opening with a phrase which I realised only
retrospectively echoes the same shape and
rhythm that pervades Torua, written for violin
and piano in the immediate aftermath of the
February 2011 earthquake in Christchurch.
Both pieces draw on the Otago accent of
the korimako or bellbirds that seem to sing
vociferously every time I sit down to write.
No stars, not even clouds is written in a single
movement, but has elements of a tripartite
structure within it.
No stars, not even clouds is dedicated to
the wonderful players of the Enso Quartet,
for whom the piece was commissioned by
Chamber Music New Zealand.
Enso String Quartet with Michael Endres
Gillian Whitehead is widely recognised as one
of the most important composers working in
Australasia. She grew up in a musical family
in Whangarei and studied music in Auckland
and Wellington before undertaking postgraduate study at the University of Sydney,
and in London with Peter Maxwell Davies.
After 14 years in Europe working as a freelance
composer, she taught at the University of
Sydney from 1981-96, with significant breaks
to concentrate on composition.
7.
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Dmitri Shostakovich
Born St Petersburg, 25 September 1906 | Died Moscow, 9 August 1975
Piano Quintet in G minor Opus 57
Shostakovich was a child prodigy, and began
studying at the Petrograd Conservatory at
the age of 13. He wrote his First Symphony
as a graduation piece when he was 19, then
embarked on a career as both pianist and
composer. During the following decade he
wrote three more symphonies, his first piano
concerto, three ballets, several film scores,
and two operas - The Nose and Lady Macbeth
of Mtsensk. He was highly regarded within
the Soviet Union, and Lady Macbeth was
regarded as a “major achievement of Socialist
construction”, performing to packed houses
for two years.
In 1936, however, an article in Pravda
suddenly attacked the work, describing it
as “fidgety, screaming and neurotic”. The
reasons behind this unprecedented assault
are unclear, but Stalin’s second ‘Five Year
Plan’ to strengthen the country’s economy
was resulting in violent oppression and
starvation. The Soviet people, though,
were told that their lives were happy, and
artists were expected to produce works that
supported this image. Lady Macbeth, with
its negative portrayal of the idle bourgeoisie,
clearly did not fit the current political view.
The criticism shocked Shostakovich and he
became extremely circumspect for the rest of
his life, avoiding overt political content and
modifying his musical language to try and
avoid being considered ‘modernist’. His Fifth
Symphony of 1937, reportedly written as “a
Soviet artist’s creative response to justified
criticism”, brought him back into favour with
the government - at least temporarily. The
Piano Quintet was written and premièred in
1940 and Shostakovich received a Stalin Prize
for it the following year.
An impassioned opening statement on
the piano is answered by the strings, and
followed by a lengthy reflective section. The
movement closes with a return to the opening
material and moves straight into the Fugue,
which grows in emotional intensity and then
returns to a reflective mood.
The Scherzo begins with a flat-footed
exuberance in the strings, with the lighter
piano dancing around them. Its simplicity
seems somewhat ironic in the context. A
singing violin melody, accompanied by
plodding pizzicato in the cello, introduces
the Intermezzo, and these two ideas are
exchanged between the piano and strings
during the movement. The Finale begins
gently, but develops into a march-like piece,
full of scintillating piano textures.
Enso String Quartet with Michael Endres
Prelude: Lento ~
Fugue: Adagio
Scherzo: Allegretto
Intermezzo: Lento ~
Finale: Allegretto
9.
KALEIDOSCOPES 2013
Chamber Music New Zealand’s Concert Season featuring
KRONOS QUARTET | GALVANISED with Diedre Irons (piano)
NZTRIO | TOKYO STRING QUARTET | BEETHOVEN reCYCLE
(Michael Houstoun performs Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas)
EINSTEIN’S UNIVERSE (Featuring UK violinist Jack Liebeck)
GOLDNER STRING QUARTET with Piers Lane (piano)
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Kaleidoscopes 2012
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