KEY POINTS:
The New Zealand String Quartet, based in Wellington, has come north with a new pair of programmes, having launched the first of its French Connections concerts at the Glen Eden Playhouse on Thursday.
This weekend it is the city's turn to go Gallic.
Violist Gillian Ansell admits that the group gets intense satisfaction from organising concerts around a theme or concept. "Most programmes are a mixed bag, but this gives us a chance to delve a little more deeply."
She singles out last year's coupling of Mendelssohn with the Bach Goldberg Variations as one of her most enjoyable. "People who may have been sceptical with us tackling the Bach came out totally convinced by the way the quartet can be used to separate the various lines and make this score really clear."
Clarity has always been one of the hallmarks of the Gallic muse and French Connections offers works by Debussy, Ravel, Faure and Dutilleux alongside Takemitsu, a Japanese composer with strong French sympathies.
"The Ravel and Debussy Quartets are the cornerstones of the programme," says Ansell. "The Ravel is clear and light-filled while the Debussy is dark and brooding. We have lived with them for years and the idea of picking them up again has been in the back of our minds for some time."
Returning to these two scores a decade after the NZSQ recorded them for Atoll Records, Ansell finds one thing has changed. "The feeling of time within our playing and the flow of the music," she says. "Time passes in a different way from what it was when we were chugging away learning to play these works.
"There's more fluidity. We are trying to focus on conveying a sense of freedom and spontaneity, something we've always believed in. It's got to sound as natural as possible."
But is there not a paradox, I ask, that music which comes across as the epitome of naturalness may have caused all manner of struggle and torment for its composer?
Ansell gives a grim laugh. "And for us," she retorts. "The only way we can get to that stage is by working our guts out for hours and hours."
For all the NZSQ's busy recording schedules which include its ongoing series of Mendelssohn Quartets for Naxos, this group puts a special priority on live concerts.
"There is something wonderful about being in the presence of a performance art that's being made at that time," she stresses. "You are experiencing the inspiration of that performer in that moment in time."
Michael Houstoun is featured tonight in Faure's First Piano Quartet.
"Michael's been champing at the bit for years to play this piece," Ansell laughs. "It's just not played enough."
Ainsi la nuit, the 1976 quartet by the veteran Dutilleux (92 and still putting notes on staves) has "a fascinating soundworld", according to Ansell. "There are some dissonances but so much of it gorgeous, luminous music."
Finally, Takemitsu's A Way a Lone offers Auckland audiences the opportunity to revisit those enchanted soundscapes that many first heard when the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra played the Japanese composer's From Me Flows What You Call Time at AK07.
Ansell is has just one piece of advice. "Shut your eyes and be taken into a dream world."
PERFORMANCE
What: French Connections, with the New Zealand String Quartet
Where and when: Raye Freedman Arts Centre, tonight at 7.30pm; St Matthew-in-the City, tomorrow at 3pm
