New Zealand String Quartet at Auckland Town Hall

"Get Amplified in 05!" the banners shriek. "New Zealand's awesome foursome plug in to perform a work inspired by the Vietnam War, featuring spoken word, shouting, maracas and Tam Tams."

Chamber Music New Zealand have left out the bowed wine glasses in its headlines, but tomorrow night the New Zealand String Quartet will give Auckland audiences a taste of one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary American music when they perform George Crumb's Black Angels.

This is music that reaches back to the boyhood days of Douglas Beilman, the NZSQ's second violinist. Beilman grew up in San Francisco with the Vietnam War constantly on the television.

"Every night we could see the death counts and I remember how strange I felt," he says.

Decades later, playing Black Angels, he feels "a sense of deep contradiction, between the wars that human society finds itself drawn into and the utter devastation of loss".

"For Crumb," Beilman asserts, "war is an outmoded option for human beings to settle their problems. And before the 20th century, composers didn't concern themselves with the human cost of war and government-sponsored violence, apart from in a glorifying way."

And if Black Angels catches that violence (Beilman warns of "the shock of the opening which sounds like electric guitars gone crazy"), the violinist is quick with reassurance.

"It doesn't make you squirm as much as some other pieces because it is so theatrical and its soundworld is so multi-hued. One of the things that is so startling with Black Angels is the huge contrasts allowed by the amplification," Beilman continues. "That dichotomy you feel between fierce noise and the almost prayerful yearning for a different kind of existence."

This is not the first time the group has tackled this score. Eight years ago they slipped it into a fairly low-key concert at Hopetoun Alpha. Now, playing the Town Hall as part of a major concert series brings something of a validation with it.

"We hadn't done it for a larger audience and this piece will underline how much the string quartet is still a relevant medium for communicating important understandings.

"I remember our first rehearsal a few months ago, coming back to the Crumb after all those years. We couldn't help saying, 'What a great piece", our feelings about the work had been confirmed. Music can be like a slow-growing New Zealand tree. You put it in the garden and tend it for a few years and then, without you noticing it, it suddenly takes on a new form."

Unlike Kronos Quartet, who specialise in the contemporary, the NZSQ has always gone for the eclectic mix - Crumb shares the programme with Haydn and Beethoven tomorrow night - and Beilman feels the group "couldn't find a better balance between new things and the traditional repertoire".

It helps to encourage audiences to extend their listening borders, although there is a danger in putting too much emphasis on the campaign trail.

"We live in a world saturated with commercial marketing," Beilman explains. "You can only try to do as much as you can to let people hear your music. You can be so consumed by trying that you don't focus on what should be a primary concern: assimilating new sounds and rehearsing to find your communal voice.

"There are so many great quartets around and, if you don't have something to say as a quartet, then what is the point of people coming to your concert? The only way you acquire that communal colour is through the process of many hours working through the repertoire."

Performance

*What: New Zealand String Quartet
*Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Thurs Mar 24, 8pm