CLik the ensemble. CLiK the ensemble. John Chen (piano) Natalie Lin (violin) Edward King (cello)

Transcription

1 CLik the ensemble CLiK the 1 ensemble John Chen (piano) Natalie Lin (violin) Edward King (cello)

2 Chamber Music New Zealand Touring NZ 15 Sep - 8 Oct 2015 A sublime musical journey through time INSPIRED BY BACH MICHAEL HOUSTOUN Bach Ross Harris Lilburn Rachmaninov Shostakovich Liszt For more ticketing information go to chambermusic.co.nz/houstoun We would like to thank our Jubilee patrons for their generosity and support: Core Patron: Sir James Wallace KNZM Gold Jubilee Patrons: Paul and Sheryl Baines, Donald and Susan Best, Philip and Rosalind Burdon Graeme and Di Edwards, Ann Harden (in memory of Joan Kerr) Tom and Ann Morris, Roger and Catherine Taylor, Lloyd Williams and Cally McWha David and the late Helen Zwartz

3 CLik the ensemble Kia ora Chamber Music New Zealand s 2015 season centres on the 50th Jubilee of the NZCT Chamber Music Contest. This, indeed, is worth celebrating. Last month, we toured the Turnovsky Jubilee Ensemble, a large ensemble that, as its leader Wilma Smith pointed out, included members of winning groups from every decade of the Contest s history. CLiK gives us a different kind of group: three young friends who are all 21st century winners. In the years following the Contest, John, Natalie and Edward have all triumphed in international competitions. There can be no doubt that the NZCT Chamber Music Contest has been a key element in helping generations of musicians hone their technical, ensemble and interpretative capacity. It has also helped build a wider group of discerning audiences (people with first-hand experience of the satisfaction and thrill of being on stage giving everything they ve got for the pleasure of others). The CLiK tour is supported by the Deane Endowment Trust. Sir Roderick and Lady Deane have been generous supporters of Chamber Music New Zealand projects for many years. We appreciate that enormously. The Eastern & Central Community Trust have helped us present CLiK in Napier and Palmerston North. While on the subject of support, I strongly commend to you our Jubilee Appeal (details of which appear later in this programme book). If you share my wish to see the Chamber Music Contest flourish for another fifty years, if you would like to help us in our mission to foster and present the very best New Zealand musicians, and if you would like to help us bring top-flight international ensembles to Aotearoa, please join me in making a donation to Chamber Music New Zealand. 1 Peter Walls Chief Executive, Chamber Music New Zealand Please respect the music, the musicians, and your fellow audience members, by switching off all cellphones, pagers and watches. Taking photographs, or sound or video recordings during the concert is strictly prohibited unless with the prior approval of Chamber Music New Zealand.

4 2 Chamber Music New Zealand Message from Deane Endowment Trust Chamber Music New Zealand s celebration of 50 years of the Chamber Music Contest is exciting in its own right. However, to celebrate young musicians and for us to hear them perform has been one of the great strengths of the CMNZ programme. One of my favourite objectives of the Deane Endowment Trust is to promote the talents of young musicians. So we are delighted to be able to support this concert series being performed by the three outstanding young musicians you are going to be listening to tonight. John s fans love the way he comes back to New Zealand so regularly and impresses audiences from Waikanae to Auckland with his talent. Natalie, as you know, was the Audience Favourite at the Michael Hill Competition and as we believe in the wisdom of crowds you will know tonight why her ability was recognised in this way. We heard Edward perform in the 2014 Australian Cello Awards and I know you are going to be captivated by his performance. I hope you will find this a special night to remember in this year of memory and celebration for CMNZ. We are very pleased to sponsor the tour of these three gifted musicians. The Trust would like to acknowledge the vast contribution of Euan Murdoch who has supported such a wide range of musical activities, helped young people to develop their talents, and created opportunities for audiences to appreciate their musicianship. We are also delighted that Peter Walls is now leading CMNZ and working so closely with its supporters. We are fortunate indeed to have such talent devoted to continuing the mission of Chamber Music New Zealand. Gillian Deane, Chair, Deane Endowment Trust

5 CLik the ensemble 3 CLik the ensemble Programme Granados Allegro de concierto Opus 46 Page 7 Lilburn Sonata for violin and piano (1950) Page 8 Ginastera Pampeana No 2 for cello and piano Page 9 Interval Schubert Piano Trio No 1 in B flat D898 Page 10 Napier 21 August Palmerston North 23 August Nelson 25 August Invercargill 26 August Auckland 30 August The Auckland concert is being recorded for broadcast by Radio NZ Concert

6 4 Chamber Music New Zealand CLik the ensemble Three of our brightest young musical stars return to share their love of chamber music with New Zealand audiences. Each of them gained their early performing experience through the NZCT Chamber Music Contest, with John Chen being part of the winning group in 2001, and Natalie Lin and Edward King in Since then, they have all studied and begun their careers overseas. John Chen (piano) In 2004 John Chen became the youngest ever winner of the Sydney International Piano Competition, also scooping up the chamber music prize. The previous year he won the Lev Vlassenko Australasian Piano Competition, and the following year graduated from the University of Auckland, where he studied with Rae de Lisle. His Saguaro Piano Trio, which has toured for Chamber Music New Zealand, won the Hamburg International Chamber Music Competition in 2009.He is now based in Hamburg, where he teaches chamber music at the Hamburg Musikhochschule, and has also been teaching in Zambia. His discography includes solo piano works by Dutilleux, Debussy and Ravel, and duos by Beethoven and Schubert with the cellist Niklas Schmidt.

7 CLik the ensemble 5 Natalie Lin (violin) Natalie Lin is the only New Zealander in the last decade to be a prizewinner at the Michael Hill International Violin Competition, where she also gained the Audience Choice Award in the 2013 competition. During her studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music with violin pedagogue Paul Kantor, she worked as his teaching assistant at the Institute and at the Aspen Music Festival. She is currently studying for a Doctorate and teaching at Rice University. In 2013 she was selected as the Concertmaster of the Britten-Pears Orchestra in Britain, and she now leads the chamber ensemble Kinetic in conductorless performances in Houston. She has recently toured New Zealand as part of the Turnovsky Jubilee Ensemble. Edward King (cello) Auckland-born Edward King studied the cello from the age of three with Sally-Anne Brown, then with James Tennant at the University of Waikato, where he was a Sir Edmund Hillary Scholar. After graduation he furthered his studies at the Leopold Mozart Centre in Augsburg with Julius Berger, and is now studying with Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. In 2009 his Leonari Trio won the ROSL Arts/Pettman International Scholarship and the following year the group toured Britain. He has been a prizewinner at European events such as the Lutoslawski International Cello Competition, and in 2014 was a finalist in the Australian Cello Awards.

8 6 Chamber Music New Zealand MAKE A DIFFERENCE For the young musicians in Eight Minus One, winning the Nelson District Round of the NZCT Chamber Music Contest was a euphoric moment. With your generous support, we can continue to provide these inspiring and memorable opportunities for young people in communities across New Zealand. To donate to our Chamber Music Contest 50th Jubilee Appeal visit: chambermusic.co.nz/support-us or phone Kirsten Mason on

9 CLik the ensemble 7 Enrique Granados Born Lérida, 27 July 1867 Died at sea, 24 March 1916 Allegro de concierto in C sharp Opus 46 Granados was a renowned pianist in his day, performing regularly with musicians such as Thibaud, Saint-Saëns and Casals. He initially attended the Barcelona Conservatorium, but from 1884 he studied in Madrid with Felipe Pedrell, a scholar of old Spanish music. Pedrell inspired him to create a new genre of Spanish piano music, combining Liszt-style piano techniques and Germanic romanticism with melodic and emotional elements of Spanish traditional music. Granados had a passion for the paintings of Goya, and in 1912 he wrote a suite for piano entitled Goyescas. Three years later he turned it into an opera, using the unusual technique of producing the score before asking a librettist to provide the text. The opera was premièred in New York in 1916, and Granados, who had a morbid fear of the sea, was persuaded to attend. On his return journey, the boat that Granados and his wife were travelling on was torpedoed by the German navy, and they both drowned. Allegro de concierto was written in 1903 for a competition run by the Royal Conservatory of Madrid. Entries were intended to provide an examination piece for piano students at the Conservatory, and Granados was declared the winner. The work is a popular showpiece both for its virtuoso brilliance and its expressive, singing lines. After an initial flourish, the cheerful first theme is heard above busy figuration. As the music relaxes a second, minor key theme appears, and these two elements are intertwined in a tour-de-force of pianistic expression, finishing with a brilliant display of the instrument s power.

10 8 Chamber Music New Zealand Douglas Lilburn Born Wanganui, 2 November 1915 Died Wellington, 6 June 2001 Sonata for Violin and Piano (1950) Pioneering composer Douglas Lilburn has been an influential figure in New Zealand composition, both through his own works and through his 30 year teaching career. His initial music studies were at Canterbury University, though at that stage it was not possible to study composition. After winning a competition promoted by the visiting pianist Percy Grainger in 1936, Lilburn gained the confidence to enrol at the Royal College of Music in London. There he studied composition with Ralph Vaughan Williams, as well as piano and conducting. After returning to New Zealand in 1940, he settled in Christchurch and earned a living as a freelance composer and teacher. Christchurch was the centre of a vibrant artistic community at the time, and Lilburn made close connections with others who were establishing their careers, such as painter Rita Angus and theatre director Ngaio Marsh, for whom he wrote incidental music. He also used texts by poets such as Denis Glover, most notably in the popular Sings Harry song cycle. In 1947 he moved to Wellington to take up a job as a lecturer at the newly created music department of Victoria University, and in 1966 he established the country s first Electronic Music Studio there. The Sonata for violin and piano being played tonight is the third and last sonata he wrote for that combination, following two earlier sonatas written in It was composed for the violinist Ruth Pearl, who was later the leader of the NZ Broadcasting Corporation Concert Orchestra, and pianist Frederick Page, Professor of Music at Victoria University. They performed it around New Zealand while touring for the Chamber Music Federation (now Chamber Music New Zealand). The work has been described as one of its composer s greatest triumphs: dramatic, haunted, yet soaring and brightly lit. Written as a single movement, it has five distinct sections that present shifting emotional states.

11 CLik the ensemble 9 Alberto Ginastera Born Buenos Aires, 11 April 1916 Died Geneva, 25 June 1983 Pampeana No 2 While he was still a student at the National Conservatory in Buenos Aires, Ginastera had his ballet suite Panambi performed at the Teatro Colón, and was immediately acclaimed as a new voice in Argentinian music. The full ballet was premièred in 1940, and earned Ginastera a commission from the American Ballet Caravan for a second work, Estancia, that also became extremely popular. Both pieces are strongly influenced by folk music, particularly the dance styles and guitar playing of Argentina s cowboys, the gauchos. In 1945 he was dismissed from a teaching post at the Military Academy after mounting a protest in support of his colleagues, and he took up a Guggenheim grant and spent the following year in America, where he studied with Aaron Copland. Ginastera made the first of many visits to Europe in 1951, to hear his First String Quartet performed at the ISCM festival in Frankfurt. The following year he was again dismissed from his teaching post for refusing to rename the La Plata Conservatory (which he had founded on his return from America) after Eva Peron, and he was not reinstated until 1956, after the fall of the Peron regime. In 1962 his growing international reputation was recognised with his appointment to head the new electronic music studio and centre for graduate composition students. He remained there until 1971, when he married the Argentinian cellist Aurora Natola and moved to Switzerland, devoting the remainder of his life to composing. Ginastera wrote three works entitled Pampeana, which can be translated as of the pampas (Argentinian grasslands). The first, for violin and piano, was composed in 1947 and the third, for orchestra, in Pampeana No 2 dates from 1950, and seems to have originally been dedicated to the Russian cellist Edmund Kurtz, though a revised version carries a co-dedication to his wife Natola. Subtitled Rhapsody for cello and piano, the cello part in particular has a melodic freedom and declamatory character that contrasts with the more earthy dance-rhythms of the second section and the galloping finale. Ginastera himself noted the inspiration he drew from the landscape of Argentina: Whenever I have crossed the pampas, my spirit felt itself inundated by changing impressions, now joyful, now melancholy, produced by its limitless immensity and by the transformation that the countryside undergoes in the course of the day... from my first contact, I desired to write a work reflecting these states of my spirit.

12 10 Chamber Music New Zealand Franz Schubert Born Vienna, 31 January 1797 Died Vienna, 19 November 1828 Piano Trio No 1 in B flat D898 Allegro moderato Andante un poco mosso Scherzo: Allegro Rondo: Allegro vivace - Presto Like Mozart and Haydn before him, Schubert was born into a musical household where proficiency on a number of instruments was taken for granted. He played in the family string quartet alongside his father and elder brothers, and records from the Imperial College in Vienna (to which Schubert won a scholarship) show that he received tuition on both violin and piano. However, unlike his predecessors, he was not a virtuoso performer and therefore struggled to gain public exposure for his compositions. During his lifetime Schubert was regarded primarily as a songwriter and composer of dances and marches for the piano, since these were the pieces that the music-buying public sought. Few of his other compositions (which included string quartets, piano trios, symphonies, operas and masses) were published in his lifetime, and he earned little money from them. He was highly regarded in musical circles, however, and in 1826 was elected to membership of the Philharmonic Society, an exclusive group that valued Schubert s works highly. From 1821 his supporters also began a holding series of Schubertiade evenings at private houses, and these were an important venue for Schubert to present his own compositions at a time when public concerts were rare. Early in 1823 Schubert fell ill with what turned out to be syphilis, and the last six years of his life were marked by bouts of illness, but also a renewed sense of purpose in his work. Many of his

13 CLik the ensemble 11 most renowned chamber works, such as the String Quintet in C, the Death and the Maiden Quartet, and the two Piano Trios were written in this period. His first Piano Trio, in B flat, was probably written late in 1827, and performed a few months later by leading Viennese musicians including violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh, whose string quartet had premiered many of Beethoven s Quartets. The Trio captures the essence of Schubert s late style. It opens with an expansive theme that is contrasted with the lyrical second theme, introduced by the cello. This melody is derived from a song he had written two years earlier, whose text reads: Shatter all my happiness, take away everything I possess at once. Leave me only my zither, and I shall be merry and rich. The unsettled development section is signalled by a minor key version of the first theme, but the movement returns to its original sunny mood for the recapitulation. A cello melody again features in the slow movement, which also has a darker middle section, reminiscent of Gypsy music, and the third movement has the folk dance style of an energetic Austrian Ländler, with a more relaxed Viennese waltz providing the inspiration for the central Trio. The final movement is a sonata-rondo, and the main theme again draws on the tune of an earlier song, this time with the optimistic text: Let us, in the bright May morning, take delight in the brief life of the flower, before its fragrance disappears.

14 12 Chamber Music New Zealand Board Chair, Roger King, Paul Baines, Gretchen La Roche, Sarah Sinclair, Lloyd Williams, Vanessa Van den Broek Staff Chief Executive, Peter Walls Development Manager, Kirsten Mason Development Executive, Gemma Robinson Operations Coordinator, Rachel Hardie Artistic Manager, Catherine Gibson Education and Outreach Coordinator, Sue Jane Programme Writer, Jane Dawson Alumni Correspondent, Salina Fisher Artistic Assistant, Jack Hobbs Marketing Manager, Shelley Davis Marketing & Communications Coordinator, Hannah Darroch Ticketing & Database Coordinator, Laurel Bruce Design & Print Coordinator, Darcy Woods Publicist, Sally Woodfield Office Administrator, Becky Holmes Regional Concerts & Other Events Takiri Ensemble (vocal) Kaitaia 23 August Wanaka 25 August Motueka 27 August Waikanae 30 August Wanganui 1 September Rotorua 3 September Whakatane 6 September NZ Guitar Quartet Warkworth 6 September Gisborne 8 September Blenheim 11 September Upper Hutt 14 September Te Koki Trio (piano trio) Wellington 6 September Branches Auckland: Chair, Victoria Silwood; Concert Manager, John Giffney Hamilton: Chair, Murray Hunt; Concert Manager, Gaye Duffill New Plymouth: Concert Manager, Susan Case Hawkes Bay: Chair, June Clifford; Concert Manager, Liffy Roberts Manawatu: Chair, Graham Parsons; Concert Manager, Virginia Warbrick Wellington: Concert Manager, Rachel Hardie Nelson: Chair, Annette Monti; Concert Manager, Clare Monti Christchurch: Chair, t.b.c.; Concert Manager, Jody Keehan Dunedin: Chair, Terence Dennis; Concert Manager, Richard Dingwall Southland: Chair, Shona Thomson; Concert Manager, Jennifer Sinclair Regional Presenters Marlborough Music Society Inc (Blenheim), Cromwell & Districts Community Arts Council, Musica Viva Gisborne, Music Society Eastern Southland (Gore), Kaitaia Community Arts Service, Aroha Music Society (Kerikeri), Chamber Music Hutt Valley, Motueka Music Group, South Waikato Music Society Inc (Putararu), Waimakariri Community Arts Council (Rangiora), Rotorua Music Federation, Taihape Music Group, Tauranga Musica Inc, Upper Hutt Music Society, Waikanae Music Society, Wanaka Concert Society Inc, Chamber Music Wanganui, Warkworth Music Society, Wellington Chamber Music Trust, Whakatane Music Society, Whangarei Music Society. Level 4, 75 Ghuznee Street PO Box 6238, Wellington 0800 CONCERT ( ) admin@chambermusic.co.nz /ChamberMusicNZ Chamber Music New Zealand 2015 No part of this programme may be reproduced without the prior permission of Chamber Music New Zealand.

15 Thank you! A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO ALL OUR SUPPORTERS CORE FUNDER CORE PARTNER NATIONAL PARTNERS CAROLYN & PETER DIESSL TRUSTS AND FOUNDATIONS WINTON AND MARGARET BEAR CHARITABLE TRUST MARIE VANDEWART TRUST MARIAN LOUISE HOLT TRUST PARTNERS AND SUPPORTERS ACCOMMODATION Crowne Plaza Auckland, Nice Hotel New Plymouth, County Hotel Napier, Intercontinental Wellington, Kelvin Hotel Invercargill

16