New Zealand String Quartet
Over 30 years as New Zealand's only full-time professional string quartet, the New Zealand String Quartet has focused on the music of New Zealand and Asian composers along with Western repertory. The quartet was founded in 1987 by violinists Wilma Smith and Gillian Ansell, violist Sandro Costantino, and cellist Josephine Young; its lineup as of 2018 included violinists Helene Pohl and Monique Lapins, Gillian Ansell on viola (having switched from violin in 1989), and cellist Rolf Gjelsten. Their reach broadened in 1990 as they toured under the auspices of the Musica Viva agency, and the following year they took up an ongoing quartet-in-residence post at Victoria University of Wellington. By 2014, the members had all been named associate professors there. The quartet plays some 80 concerts annually in New Zealand and has made appearances in Australia, the U.S., Canada (where they have repeatedly been on the bill at the Festival of the Sound in Parry Sound, Ontario), Britain, continental Europe, China, Korea, and Mexico, where they performed at the Festival International Cervantino in Guanajuato in 2006. In 2016 they toured New Zealand with American jazz pianist Uri Caine, and they have also collaborated with Rob Thorne, a player of the traditional Maori taonga puoro instrumentarium, performing with Thorne in 2018 at the NZ Festival.
From the start, the New Zealand String Quartet has played both mainstream and regional repertory on recordings. They released an ambitious cycle of Bartók's string quartets on the Manu Music label in 1996 and have also released complete multi-volume recordings of the quartets of Brahms and Mendelssohn on Naxos. The Brahms cycle concluded in 2017 with a recording that also included the Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115. Other recordings, such as Notes from a Journey (2012, on the Atoll label, for which the quartet has recorded several times), have included works by New Zealand composers, and 2012's Asian Music for String Quartet included quartets by Chinese, Japanese, and Cambodian composers.
© James Manheim /TiVo
Similar artists
-
Janáček: Chamber Works
Chamber Music - Released by Naxos on 12 Feb 2021
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Brahms: String Quartet No. 3, Op. 67 & Clarinet Quintet, Op. 115
New Zealand String Quartet, James Campbell
Chamber Music - Released by Naxos on 13 Apr 2017
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Brahms: String Quintets Nos. 1 & 2
New Zealand String Quartet, Maria Lambros
Chamber Music - Released by Naxos on 8 Feb 2019
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Quatuors à cordes (Volume 2)
Chamber Music - Released by Naxos on 7 Sep 2009
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
BERG: String Quartet / Lyric Suite / WOLF: Italian Serenade
Chamber Music - Released by Naxos on 4 Jun 2007
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Musique d'Asie pour quatuor à cordes
Chamber Music - Released by Naxos on 1 Aug 2012
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Lilburn: String Quartet in E Minor, Phantasy Quartet & Canzonettas
New Zealand String Quartet, Helene Pohl, Douglas Beilman, Gillian Ansell, Rolf Gjelsten
Chamber Music - Released by Naxos on 3 Feb 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Notes from a Journey
New Zealand String Quartet, Richard Nunns
Chamber Music - Released by Atoll on 14 May 2012
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Farr: Works for String Quartet (Gareth Farr)
Classical - Released by Morrison Music Trust on 1 Jan 2000
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Brahms: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2
Chamber Music - Released by Naxos on 8 Jul 2016
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Ross: Making Light of Time
Jenny Wollerman, New Zealand String Quartet, Jian Liu
Classical - Released by Atoll on 18 May 2018
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Debussy & Ravel: String Quartets
Chamber Music - Released by Atoll on 1 Jan 2000
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Székely & Dvořák: String Quartets
Chamber Music - Released by Atoll on 1 Jan 2003
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Quatuors à cordes (Volume 1)
Chamber Music - Released by Naxos on 3 Mar 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Gillian Whitehead: Puhake ki te rangi & Other Music for Taonga pūoro
Richard Nunns, Tuhonohono, New Zealand String Quartet, Alexa Still
Chamber Music - Released by Atoll on 1 Dec 2007
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Helix
John Psathas, Donald Nicolson, New Zealand String Quartet, NZTrio
Classical - Released by Rattle Records on 29 Mar 2011
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Anthony Watson: The String Quartets
Classical - Released by Continuum on 24 Apr 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Anthony Watson: The String Quartets
Chamber Music - Released by Heritage Continuum on 24 Apr 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Transformations
Mike Nock, Colin Hemmingsen, Nick Tipping, John Rae, New Zealand String Quartet
Classical - Released by Colin Hemmingsen on 5 Dec 2011
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Pacifica (Ambient Sketches)
Jaz Coleman, New Zealand String Quartet
World - Released by Video Pacific Communications on 14 Dec 2009
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -