Wellington Chamber Music Sunday Concerts | Wellington

We return to play for our friends at Wellington Chamber Music with a programme of music with significant ties to Wellington Chamber Music history.

Sunday 27 April, 5pm

St Andrew's on the Terrace, 30 The Terrace, Wellington

Presented by Wellington Chamber Music Sunday Concerts

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PROGRAMME NOTES

Ioannis (John) Psathas (1966–)

Kartsigar for string quartet (2005)

I. Unbridled, Manos Breathes the Voice of Life into Kartsigar

II. Vagelis Varies the Sazi Riff at the Paradiso

Both movements of this work began as transcriptions of recorded performances by two of Greece’s living master-musicians, clarino player Manos Achalinotopoulos and percussionist Vagelis Karypis. The transcriptions are based on two separate recordings of a traditional taximi entitled Kartsigar. Taximia form part of an oral tradition where improvisation played an important role.

The taximi Kartsigar comprises two elements, an ostinato and the improvised melody. The melody forms the basis of the first movement of the quartet, and the ostinato forms the basis of the second.

The first movement grows from my transcription of Manos (whose surname translates to “he who cannot be bridled”) performing his own astonishing realisation of Kartsigar on the CD Klarino (FM Records FM688). The traditional ostinato has been removed from this movement and replaced by a pedal note (F-sharp), which creates a very different set of tensions and resolutions for the improvised melody.

The ostinato in Kartsigar is heard unaccompanied in the first two measures of the second movement, and then continues throughout. Through transcription of his live performance I discovered that Vagelis had produced some 80 separate variations of the ostinato almost without repetition. This sequence of variations became the basis for the second movement of the quartet. 

Programme note by John Psathas, January 2005

Edvard Grieg (1843 - 1907)

String Quartet in G minor, Opus 27 (1877-78)

I. Un poco andante - Allegro molto ed agitato

II. Romanze:  Andantino

III. Intermezzo:  Allegro molto marcato - Piu vivo e scherzando

IV. Finale:  Lento - Presto al saltarello

Grieg wrote three string quartets of which the first is lost and the third was never completed, leaving this Quartet in G minor as his only complete composition in this genre. It was written in 1877-78 and given its first performances in 1878 in Cologne and Leipzig.

The density of sound in the Quartet was unusual for its time. Grieg uses fortissimo double-stopping in multiple instruments simultaneously to create a richness of texture that suggests a larger ensemble. At other times he creates different timbres by use of more subtle counterpoint, seamless voice leading across all four instruments and reference to folk and dance music. The combination of these various forms creates a work of considerable diversity and texture. Franz Liszt, a friend and supporter of Grieg’s, admired the work and welcomed this addition to the repertoire, where it remains as one of the most original and influential quartets of the late 19th century.

The Quartet uses the melody of Grieg’s own Ibsen-inspired song Spillemaend (‘Ministrel) as the principal motif throughout all four movements. Commencing on the tonic before descending to the seventh then fifth, it is somewhat reminiscent of the opening of his Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 16, composed nine years earlier. In this Quartet it serves to bind the whole work together and provides it with a thematic and melodic unity.

This motif is first heard in the slow introduction to the first movement. It then interrupts the tranquil waltz rhythm of the Romanze with an agitated second section and appears again as the opening theme in the Allegro molto of the third movement before its quieter central section. The last movement begins with a slow introduction in which the motif returns before the music launches into a Presto, with its folk-like melody and leaping dance rhythms based on a fast triple meter saltarello, to end optimistically in G major.

Grieg said of this work that it was not designed to ‘peddle occasional flashes of brilliance’ but instead ‘aims at breadth, to soar, and above all at a vigorous sound for the instruments for which it is written.’

Programme note by Anthony Grigg, 2016

Dimitri Shostakovich (1906 - 1975)

String Quartet No. 1 in C major Op 49 (1938)

I. Moderato

II. Moderato

III. Allegro molto

IV. Allegro

Written in 1938, at the age of 32, Shostakovich’s first string quartet begins his extraordinary cycle of 15 quartets. Beginning softly and with almost childlike innocence, the piece is uncharacteristically tonal and often serene. Gone are the shocking dissonances and tense harmonic undulations of his symphonies. Lasting less than 15 minutes, we night even view this piece as an emotional respite from the tumult of Shostakovich’s bigger works. 

Perhaps in a similar way to the trepidation Brahms felt in attempting to write his first symphony after the extraordinary output of Beethoven, Shostakovich looked back to the comfort, and balanced elegance, of the eighteenth-century for his first string quartet. 

The words of Shostakovich himself demonstrate his compositional process for the work:

“The whole year after completing Symphony No. 5 I did nothing. I merely wrote the Quartet, consisting of four small sections. No special idea or emotions had stimulated me to write it, and I thought the effort would fail. I wrote the first page as a kind of exercise in the quartet form, and I never thought I would complete it. Yet later on the work absorbed me to the extent that I completed the quartet extraordinarily rapidly.”

MUSICIANS

New Zealand String Quartet

                Peter Clark – Violin

                Gillian Ansell – Viola

                Anna van der Zee – Guest Violin

                Callum Hall – Guest Cello