We welcome our first work by exciting American composer, Nokuthula Ngwenyama, of Ndebele and Japanese descent, in a specially commissioned work by the Takács Quartet. Flow is inspired by aspects of the natural world as diverse as starling murmurations, black hole collisions, and Madagascar lemur song and rhythms.
The concert opens with Manaaki, a musical enactment of the welcome journey onto a marae, and closes with Messiaen’s epic Quartet for the End of Time, written in 1941 in the Stalag VIII – a prisoner-of-war camp near Görlitz, for the instrumentalists available and performed to the prisoners. Messiaen later recalled, ‘Never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension.’
Brownlee/Tikao – Manaaki for Quartet and Taonga Pūoro – New Zealand String Quartet, Bob Bickerton (taonga pūoro)
Nokuthula Ngwenyama – Flow – Takács Quartet – New Zealand premiere
Olivier Messiaen – Quartet for the End of Time – Dénes Várjon (piano), Helene Pohl (violin), James Campbell (clarinet), Rolf Gjelsten (cello)
