2018 National Tour: Turning Points

This year’s national tour in August/September will see us perform four carefully curated programmes of groundbreaking works which each, in their own way, have affected the future of string quartet composition.

Included in our Turning Points touring repertoire is Mozart’s String Quartet in C, K465, which acquired the nickname Dissonance several years after his death, undoubtedly due to the extraordinary harmonic boldness of the first movement’s slow introduction. Despite its title, this quartet is one of Mozart’s most brilliant and high-spirited works.

Beethoven was renowned as a trailblazer so it’s not surprising that each of our three tour programmes includes one of his most innovative quartets: the first of the Razumovsky quartets (op 59/1); his quartet in F minor, op 95 (nicknamed Serioso); and the extraordinary opus 131 quartet in C# minor, which Robert Schumann felt stood “…on the extreme boundary of all that has hitherto been attained by human art and imagination.”

Quartets from the 19th and 20th centuries are also to the fore, including Smetana’s semi-autobiographical From My Life, Debussy’s colouristic Quartet in G minor, Webern’s delicious Langsamer Satz and quirky Bagatelles, and the extraordinary Abhisheka by New Zealand’s own John Psathas.

NZSQ cellist Rolf Gjelsten says:

“We’re looking forward to sharing with you the genius and vision of these works as well as elucidating the qualities which make each work so remarkable.”