The return of Mark Menzies

Violinist Mark Menzies tells WILLIAM DART why he's unafraid to move to the music.

This week Aucklanders have the chance to catch up with a young man who is one of the best violinists this country has produced.

Mark Menzies returns on a brief visit from Los Angeles, where he is on the staff of the California Institute of the Arts.

Menzies measures his words carefully, with a subtle West Coast burr, although excitement breaks through when he talks about a concert at the University Music Theatre, where he will join brilliant German pianist Erik Reischl and local musicians David Nalden, Hye-Won Kim and Tom Pierard.

Mozart's G minor Piano Quartet, he says, reveals the composer "at his most unstable ... and most interesting". He spins terms like "postmodernist", "cut-up" and even "schizophrenic" around, of all works, Dvorak's Piano Quintet.

It's easy to sense that Menzies' favourite on the programme is the Piano Quartet by the Russian composer Schnittke, a score which does some extraordinary things to a defenceless piece by Mahler.

Menzies plays down the deconstruction and enthuses over "the vibrancy of its colour. It's not just gross distortion or random musical violence. Schnittke is allowing us to see Mahler's world with more brightness".

Here is a performer who doesn't necessarily toe the line when he tackles Bach or Mozart. Menzies feels that the player must find a contemporary spirit in that music in terms of today, the here and now. "It must be astonishing! Vivaldi's Four Seasons can be boring and idiotic, but it can also be a hair-raising experience - it's up to the performer."

It's the sheer physicality of Menzies' music-making that makes it stand out. I can already imagine those wild, swooping bows in the more passionate sections of the Dvorak, and can see him fearlessly navigating Mozart's storm-tossed pages.

It's all part of communication: "Audiences often listen with their eyes and certain gestures imply a potency much more than the sound alone. And so many performers are unwilling to show their emotion these days."

Chamber music is Menzies' great passion and concerts with his Ensemble Sospeso have brought him favourable reviews in major newspapers on both coasts of the United States.

Here is an art that demands a deep personal involvement: "I'm just not interested if the music is not part of the social fabric that I live with. I like to travel and have the time to make music. It's so easy for music to become part of an infrastructure that has musicians just turning up and pumping out their notes."

Menzies returns to New Zealand each year, and inevitably there are musical connections to be made.

More often than not, our own composers have the chance to benefit from his expertise (an expertise displayed on his fine Waiteata CD of New Zealand violin music a few years back).

He's also drawn to the landscape, the light and the chance to "give something back for all that I have got from this country".

Menzies is in tune with the way we think and the way we care, unlike the blissfully unconcerned Californians.

"The rest of the world can fall into hell in a handbasket as far as California's concerned. They'd still put out lots of superficial movies with Bruce Willis.

"After September 11, we were primed for a recession, treated to so many outrageous distortions and then, suddenly, there's nothing to worry about. It's like a two-day rainstorm: you have it, it passes and everything's back to normal."

* Celebrity Concert, Sunday, Music Theatre, University of Auckland