Review: New Zealand String Quartet at Auckland Town Hall

The New Zealand String Quartet is known for intriguing programming and Tuesday's Seven Last Words concert was one of its most fascinating projects to date.

They played Haydn's The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross, placed by director Sara Brodie before projected images of paintings by Nigel Brown and other material by Andrew Brettell. In between Haydn's movements, Dinah Hawken read her own short poems.

The power of Haydn's score derives from its simplicity and a certain stylistic restlessness, as if the composer was trying to catch the stream-of-consciousness utterances of the dying Christ.

The NZSQ certainly conveyed this. Barely a note or rest were out of place; there was an utter unanimity of purpose. If a certain strain registered towards the end, then even this seemed psychologically appropriate for the occasion.

Hawken delivered her poems with a naturalness that allowed her words full resonance. And these images, ranging from her opening rumination on the physicality of the cross to later reflections on the faces of the Mother and Child, would have wilted had they been delivered with any rhetoric.

Brown's rough-hewn paintings, complete with a black-singletted Kiwi bloke and a landscape strewn with memories of McCahon, added a New Zealand context. Yet these bold, direct visions were the perfect complement to this 18th-century score.

From time to time, most effectively, the artist's hand was projected on to the screen, bringing one of his figures into existence.

Some of Brettell's own contributions were ingenious, as when a lamp was superimposed over a burning candle.

However, having a lamp flicker and a bird fly overhead within an actual landscape smacked of gimmickry.

At times, Brettell strove too much for significance, most embarrassingly when the camera panned over an audience in another space and time, reacting to the music with beatific enjoyment.

While this concert was a celebration of the Haydn bicentenary, by mentioning the Griller Quartet's performance of this work in 1953, the programme booklet reminded us that 2010 will mark Chamber Music New Zealand's 60th birthday.

With both concerts of this season attracting bigger audiences than usual, perhaps Auckland is finally realising what a cultural lifeline CMNZ is.