Reminiscence

SOUNZ Virtual Concert

Four friends join the New Zealand String Quartet for this virtual concert of works by New Zealand composers. The programme celebrates the collaborative spirit and draws on themes of transience and reminiscence.

The performance opens with Gao Ping’s ‘Ephemera’, which depicts the ‘miraculous shine’ of the insect Fu You (ephemeron in Chinese) and premiered in Canada with clarinettist James Campbell in 2014.

Gillian Whitehead’s ‘still, echoing’, performed with English pianist Kathryn Stott follows. Unified by six notes, the piece explores the sound possibilities of a piano quintet as the instruments ebb and flow like the Pacific Ocean’s tide and evoke the stillness of Te Whanga Lagoon on Chatham Island.

Tenor Jared Holt and the NZSQ premiered Janet Jennings’s song-cycle ‘In Memorium’ in 2018 to mark centenary of the First World War. Based on four poems by English writer Edward Thomas, the work captures exhilaration and despair at the onset of war (‘The Trumpet’), solitude (‘The Owl’), confusion (‘The Gallows’), and concludes with a deeply-felt lament (‘In Memorium (Easter 1915)’).

A ‘deconstructed’ version of Now is the Hour, Gareth Farr composed He poroporoaki for the 2008 Dawn Service Commemoration at Gallipoli. To conclude this concert, the NZSQ perform with Taonga Pūoro artist Rob Thorne a decade later, as part of the NZ Festival.

Guest curator: NZSQ