Concert Preview: Brentano String Quartet

The Brentano String Quartet. Photo / Supplied

The Brentano String Quartet plays its last Australian concert tonight before crossing the Tasman for a Chamber Music New Zealand tour opening in Auckland on Tuesday.

Violinist Serena Canin has been particularly taken with Australian venues.

"We try to play our best no matter what the circumstances are," she says. "But when we find a nice hall it inspires us to play even a little bit better. We respond to the warmth or the particular ring of the sound."

The Brentanos came together in 1992 as Princeton University's quartet-in-residence through "a passion for the string quartet literature and the medium itself - four similar but not-exactly-the-same instruments playing together, making a nice blend but also retaining their individuality".

The four young musicians studied with the celebrated Juilliard String Quartet who "always made the music interesting," Canin reflects.

"Robert Mann, the first violinist, would often complain about dinner music - if what we were doing was boring or dull then it was just 'dinner music'. He always had to find what was interesting or unusual about the music and bring that to the surface."

And why be boring, Canin feels, when composers use the string quartet for "some of their most profound and intimate music?"

She brings up Mozart's D minor Quartet K 421, which opens Tuesday's concert, the only one of its set in a minor key.

"It has such a haunting opening, marked sotto voce, beneath the voice. With Mozart's quartets, we usually think lightness, humour and elegance; this shows quite a different side of the composer."

At the other end of the programme, Beethoven's final offering, Opus 135, prompts the comment that late Beethoven is in a category all of its own.

"These quartets are ground-breaking and deeply philosophical. They break barriers and confound expectations. Beethoven was deaf and had turned very much inwards. His isolation probably contributed to his breaking with convention and going his own way."

This year the group will issue a recording of the complete late Beethoven quartets, coinciding with the release of Yaron Zilberman's movie A Late Quartet, for which the Brentanos provide the music.

The movie tells the story of a quartet of musicians, including Christopher Walken and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who struggle to stay together in the face of what the studio describes as "death, competing egos and insuppressible lust".

In July, the Brentanos celebrate their 20th anniversary with a Fragments Project.

Leading composers from Sofia Gubaidulina to Charles Wuorinen have been commissioned to respond to unfinished works by composers from Bach to Shostakovich.

Stephen Hartke, who tackles Shostakovich, is on the group's bill with Night Songs for a Desert Flower, "a beautiful piece with an evocative title" which Canin explains.

"Getting back to chamber music being such a personal medium, the desert flower of the title is a nickname for Stephen's wife."

At times one has to be as hardy as a desert bloom to survive in the music industry, especially in the classical field. Canin has her concerns.

"I struggle to stay optimistic sometimes when I see how marginalised classical music has become in our society," she says.

"Our two kids are 9 and 5 and both play instruments, but they might be the only kids in their classes who do."

As for the general attitude to classical music, "we run into accusations of elitism but I don't think it is," she says.

"This music is about people and will survive on its merit because it's so wonderful. The power is there, hopefully enough to keep people coming to concerts. There's nothing like being there - seeing it on your computer is not the same."

Performance

What: Brentano String Quartet

Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Tuesday at 8pm; WEL Energy Trust Academy of Performing Arts, Hamilton, Wednesday at 8pm