KEY POINTS:
PERFORMANCE
Who: Brentano String Quartet
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, tomorrow 7pm
Tomorrow night Aucklanders can experience four musicians who have been praised for their ability to play the late music of Beethoven as if the ink were still wet.
The award-winning Brentano String Quartet has held a prestigious residency at Princeton University for some years now and has garnered an international reputation through its concert appearances and numerous recordings.
"This is the great music you can really be excited about playing," says violist Misha Amory. "Ever since the genre was made great by Haydn, the quartet seems to be the one yardstick by which a composer measures himself."
The Brentano moniker is a nod to the man who was perhaps the greatest composer in this field. "Beethoven's 16 quartets are at the core of what we do," Amory explains. "Antonie Brentano was this woman that Beethoven liked and possibly loved; we thought that maybe if we named ourselves after her, Beethoven would love us too."
Beethoven is absent from tomorrow night's schedule, which ranges from some Monteverdi madrigals transcribed by Brentano leader Michael Steinberg to the world premiere of a new work by Gabriela Lena Frank.
In between comes Haydn - the Opus 64 no 4 Quartet, which Amory said was written at a time when the composer "didn't have to trust large audiences and had carte blanche to write whatever he wanted. A time of incredible experimentation."
I am told to watch out for some amazing guitar-like moments in the trio section of its third movement.
Another transformation comes in the frenetic Burletta from Bartok's Sixth Quartet. "It is cool in a certain way and a lot of fun. We have to make ourselves into wooden puppets," Amory laughs. "Not quite flesh and blood."
Auckland audiences will be the first in the world to hear Quijotados by the American composer Gabriela Lena Frank, which Amory describes as a five-movement rumination on Don Quixote.
"It's very rhythmic; there's a lot of dance and song in it and no one could mistake the Hispanic flavour."
Although the quartet have yet to meet and work with Frank herself, they are seasoned collaborators with some of the world's leading composers.
Amory amuses me with tales of the American Steven Mackey, the electric guitarist and Princeton music professor. "He's ideal because he tells us exactly what he wants to hear. Steve has the ability to communicate, not just in words, but by singing, groaning and tapping out rhythms; getting across the visceral effect of what he wants."
Whereas composer Milton Babbitt was "happy to entrust the interpretation to you if he is satisfied with the accuracy", it is quite the opposite with the Hungarian Gyorgy Kurtag.
"We played his Officium Breve and Kurtag really worked us over," Amory remembers.
"He left no stone unturned in five intensive hours on a 10-minute work and his parting words were, 'I think that covers most of the main points.' We could barely play it because there were just so many little points he made. It was almost paralytic for us as players, although inspiring."
The big question looms, inevitably: what is the present-day state of chamber music?
Amory is optimistic.
"You see competition from all the different entertainment media. The internet has brought so many kinds of music to any given pair of ears that it seems Western music might only have a small slice of the pie.
"However, there are more than 100 professional string quartets in the States making a living. So that can't be bad and it's hard to be pessimistic when, year after year, we find ourselves busy with appreciative audiences willing to try some of our strange new ideas."
