Chamber Music New Zealand School Music Contest at the Auckland Town Hall

By WILLIAM DART

Earlier this year some 1700 young New Zealanders took part in the early stages of Chamber Music New Zealand's School Music Contest. On Saturday, it was time to make final decisions.

The musicians hailed from only two centres, Christchurch and Auckland although the Auckland side was whittled down to just one trio through the serious illness of a student who was part of the three other line-ups. Christchurch's Bruerton Quartet opened the evening adventurously with selections from George Crumb's 1979 Music for a Summer Evening. The two percussionists and pianists conjured up the American composer's soundworld with theatrical panache; swanee-whistle serenaded piano strings and Steinways were plucked and stroked like giant kotos.

Auckland's Czech Mates swept me away with the first movement of Smetana's Piano Trio. Eugene Lees' violin had Slavic fervour, Paul Van Houtte's cello sang its soul out and pianist Joong Han Jung was not fazed by the composer's rhapsodic outbursts.

The spirit of chamber music, which judge Uwe Grodd would later mention as one of the main criteria, was boisterously healthy here.

Christchurch's Mendle Nicht Mit Meinem Mendelssohn was not so convincing with the first movement of Mendelssohn's D minor Trio. The taxing piano part held no fears for David Bui but the strings were less assured; the sparkle and glitter, which the work needs didn't quite shine through.

These two trios were highly commended by the judges while the eventual winner turned out to be Christchurch's Morrison Quartet playing two movements from Claude Bolling's Suite for Violin and Jazz Piano Trio. Although a fluent enough performance, with Ben Morrison doing a turn worthy of a young Grappelli, it could hardly be said that this ersatz piece of jazz offers musicians the interpretative challenge that other works on the programme so obviously did.

One winner had already been chosen. Jenny Thomas' September's Scars, which carried off SOUNZ's Composition Prize, was played by Thomas and two of her Diocesan schoolmates. This was a moving elegy for the victims of last year's September 11 disaster, beautifully captured in the quiet insistence and inexorable patternings of the music.