An interview with the Ensō String Quartet

Perhaps it is the line over the ō that first suggests the Ensō String Quartet is not quite like any other chamber ensemble. From its home base in New York City, the rise and rise of the group and its reputation has been attended by much excitement, with The Strad magazine declaring it “thrilling” and the Washington Post praising “glorious sonorities”. And its name unites the four players via the symbol not of a person or place, but of an ideal.

It was during their first summer working together that they stumbled across the Japanese Zen painting of the circle and responded strongly to its symbolism. “We were rehearsing at Maureen’s parents place and we found it in a dictionary of Eastern terminology,” the cellist Richard Belcher recalls. “The idea of a continuous circle seemed a wonderful representation of what we’re trying to do. It’s as Zen as you want to go. The fullness of the circle, with all its stability, perfection and imperfection: we love that as an image for music in general, but also specifically for a quartet.”

The ensemble – Belcher, violinists Maureen Nelson and Ken Hamao and violist Melissa Reardon – between them boast roots from many corners of the globe; Belcher is from Christchurch, New Zealand, while Hamao is Japanese-American; Reardon’s mother hails from the Philippines and Nelson is half Korean. The original four met as students at Yale University and formed their quartet in 1999; Hamao joined as second violinist more recently, a process they describe as “remarkably smooth”.

Early influences on their playing included some of the most renowned string quartets in the world. The Guarneri Quartet inspired Nelson when she was a student at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia; the whole group was mentored by the Tokyo Quartet at Yale; and a residency at Illinois University brought them vital tuition from the Vermeer Quartet. “We spent two years with them,” Belcher says. “The university is in the middle of the cornfields and there’s not much else to do except focus on what you’re there for, which was a lot of string quartets! That was really an incredible time and helped to establish a strong base for our playing.”

String quartets, they agree, offer a unique approach to making music. “It’s a kind of ideal democracy,” Reardon suggests. Hamao adds: “It’s the most human of interactions. In concertos, there’s a little bit of ‘me versus them’. In orchestras you follow a leader, which is one type of society, but you don’t have a voice. Here we all have a voice, as beautiful and as difficult as it can be.”

“The repertoire is spectacular and unique,” says Reardon. “Many composers wrote arguably some of their best music for the string quartet medium. There’s also the sense of communication and camaraderie that you have with your colleagues: you’re talking, arguing, fighting and laughing during the working process. And as a violist, the most rewarding repertoire is the quartet literature, because we get to play things like Beethoven, which we don’t have as soloists.”

For the Musica Viva tour, the quartet has selected two programmes covering a substantial amount of musical ground – no surprise for an ensemble that loves to explore the byways as well as the highways of its repertoire. First there is a new commission for them from the Australian composer Brenton Broadstock: “We’re thrilled about it,” says Belcher. “Touring Australia with a brand-new piece from one of Australia’s best-respected composers is going to be an amazing experience.”

Alongside this, they will play the Beethoven ‘Harp’ Quartet, Op. 74 – “the most stunning, inspirational piece, with an epic quality to it,” says Belcher. One programme matches music by the Spanish composer Turina with a quartet by Ginastera, one of Argentina’s leading 20^th-century figures – Nelson describes the latter as resembling “south-of-the-border Bartók”. The second programme features an arrangement by Nelson herself of music from the Renaissance era: “I love playing early music, but the string quartet repertoire doesn’t have any,” she points out. The line-up concludes with the exquisitely beautiful sole quartet by Ravel.

How do they relax on tour? “We eat!” they chorus. “This Australian trip is something we’ve been looking forward to for a long time,” Belcher adds. “Any time you can go to new places with such an esteemed organisation as Musica Viva is going to be pretty thrilling.”

Jessica Duchen

Ensō String Quartet tours Australia30 May – 18 June. For more information, and to book your tickets, please visit: www.musicaviva.com.au/enso

 

 

On The Vine – April 2016

In Zen Buddhism, an ensō is a hand-drawn circle expressing the moment when the mind is free to let the body create. This is the challenging paradigm chosen by an extraordinary American ensemble to exemplify its performances.

We first invited the Ensō String Quartet to visit Australia in 2012 to attend the Huntington Estate Music Festival. Its festival performances were so exhilarating that we immediately asked the quartet to return for its debut national concert tour, which runs from 30 May through to mid July.

The Ensō Quartet received its first Grammy Award nomination for an album of music by Alberto Ginastera, so it seemed appropriate to include that fine composer’s second string quartet in the first tour program, forming a little Hispanic enclave alongside Turina’s Serenata for String Quartet op 87. The second program features Ravel’s peerless String Quartet of 1903, introduced by a Renaissance medley arranged by the group’s first violinist, Maureen Nelson.

The first half of both programs concludes with Beethoven’s masterful and optimistic ‘Harp’ Quartet Op 74, which the group’s cellist Richard Belcher calls “the most stunning, inspirational piece, with an epic quality to it”. The centrepiece of this tour for me, however, is the work that opens every concert – new music by celebrated Australian composer Brenton Broadstock written expressly for this purpose.

‘Safe Haven’ is a reflection on the true story of a child refugee fleeing wartime Hungary to seek sanctuary in Australia. It is a set of variations on a popular Hungarian nursery song, set in three sections – Escape, Through A Child’s Eyes and Safe Haven. The end of at least this one particular refugee story is a happy one.

Carl Vine AO
Artistic Director

Ensō String Quartet tour Australia 30 May – 18 June. Book your tickets here: www.musicaviva.com.au/enso 

An Interview with Stephen Hough

Stephen Hough is a familiar visitor to Australia’s concert halls – and this much-loved British pianist has a fascinating story to tell about his own Antipodean roots. But then, everything about Hough is fascinating. He explores a vast range of repertoire, records prolifically for the Hyperion label and enjoys lively chamber music relationships with such artists as the cellist Steven Isserlis, with whom he has toured twice for Musica Viva. His artistic activities extend to composition, painting and writing – he has been named one of ‘20 Living Polymaths’ by The Economist – and he is now working on a novel. Indeed, he has evolved almost accidentally into the modern-day equivalent of the great “golden age” composer-pianists of the past.

Far from finding his intense travel schedule as a performer a hindrance to creativity, Hough seems to thrive on it. “I find being on the road is actually more creative than being at home,” he says. “I might get musical ideas while warming up backstage. And often there is more time on tour: for instance, with American orchestras if I have three concerts in a week, the second and third nights I have nothing to do until the evening concert except practise. If I have a piece to write I assemble sketches throughout the year, all the time; finally comes the moment when I sit down and put it all together.”

Hough’s programme for his Musica Viva tour includes his own latest piano work, the Sonata No.3, ‘Trinitas’ – which follows in his output hot on the heels of two other sonatas, the first of which was co-commissioned by Musica Viva, the Wigmore Hall in London and the Louvre in Paris.

Initially, he says, he had not been eager to write music to perform himself – but gradually this outlook has altered. “What’s funny is that I hadn’t been planning to do that,” he says. “But the commission of the Sonata No.1 started me off, and I think I got over that point.” He enjoys the fact that other pianists are playing his works now, but he also likes “having control over the performance myself”.

The Sonata No.3 qualifies as an Australian piece, he half-jokes, because he has an Australian passport. He grew up in Cheshire in the north of England and discovered his Australian connection relatively late. “My father was born in Australia,” he explains. “His parents were married in India, where they were involved in the steel business in India; they then went to Newcastle, New South Wales, where the Australian steel industry was based. My father was born in 1926, and then my grandmother took him back to India after a few months. He never saw his father again. His father tried to correspond with him, but his mother intercepted the letters and they did not make contact until much later.

“I found that I was already Australian by law, because if someone was born there before 1947, it made their children automatically Australian. Getting an Australian passport seemed a nice way to tie together the loose ends of a slightly tragic story.”

In the new sonata, commissioned jointly by the Catholic magazine The Tablet and the Barbican Centre, Hough – whose Catholic faith is a driving force in his creativity – has been inspired by the symbolism of the number three and what he sees as the parallel dogmas of the Trinity in the church and of 12-tone serialism in music.

It forms part of a programme that begins with Schubert’s A minor Sonata D784, one of the composer’s most concentrated and tragic piano works. “The whole first half is a progression from darkness to light,” Hough says. “In the Schubert there almost isn’t any light at all. Even when it goes into the major, it’s more heart-breaking than it is in the minor. Then the Franck Prelude, Chorale and Fugue is an incredible, deep-suffering piece that, at the end, has an amazing opening-out: you really do come out of the darkness.

“There’s a triptych idea behind this as well: the three-movement Schubert, the Franck in three parts, and my sonata being the ‘Trinitas’. Then there is Liszt: I feel a very strong connection myself with Liszt because I play so much of his music, but also between Liszt and Schubert because Liszt’s transcriptions brought Schubert’s song literature to a wider audience.”

And so the programme comes full circle – rather like Hough’s Australian connection. “I love going to Australia,” he remarks. “I love the quality of the light and the space – not just geographical, but also artistic. The traditions there are much less lengthy and ‘stuck’. There’s room to feel that you can bring this music and it’s fresh and new.”

Jessica Duchen

Stephen Hough tours Australia for Musica Viva 14 April – 2 May. For more information, and to book your tickets, please visit: www.musicaviva.com.au/hough

 

 

An Interview with Maxim Vengerov

We speak the day after Maxim Vengerov’s 40th birthday, which he celebrated in Geneva by giving a recital in which the Yehudi Menhuin String Academy joined him for an encore.

“It feels as if the middle part of my life has begun,” says Vengerov, who is the father of two daughters under the age of three. Concert tours, he admits, are also a way to catch up on sleep lost at home.

Though he has been to Australia to perform with orchestras in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, this will be his first tour for Musica Viva, and his first recital tour of Australia.

“Recitals are something special, because of this direct communication with the audience through music,” he says.

“In general, fewer and fewer people are going to recitals, but I’m giving a lot of recitals this season. You have to decide what you stand for. I’m a passionate recitalist, and I try to put together programmes that are full of variety. The idea is to give the audience a full spectrum of emotions.”

Does this mean that he strives for maximum emotional expression when he plays?

“No. I strive for quality of information. That is the most important thing for a musician. Because sound is like a finger-print of your body. Sound is a picture of your soul, of what is inside. Your genetic code. The information and the knowledge you’ve acquired during your life, all the things you’ve gone through – your love and passion, your experiences. The sound cannot lie. You can be technically perfect, but if something is missing for your life, then you might not understand why, but this music will not touch us.”

Two Paganini works will conclude a programme that is as high on virtuosic fireworks as it is on sentiment. Paganini’s music, once a synonym for unplayability, is today tossed off by thousands of wunderkinder around the world.

“Technical progress should and will happen,” Vengerov says. “This is a natural development. But we should never cut ourselves off from the source, from the tradition, from our predecessors. Today we have many people who can play Paganini technically well and in tune. But is it staggering? There are still only a few people who can deliver great music that is above all technical detail. There is an incredible energy in the music, and it is very challenging to perform.”

Technical excellence, though in Vengerov’s view indispensable, will always be of secondary importance.

“What is a perfect performer? For me personally it’s the person who lets the music speak for itself through the musician’s body, so that it goes directly to the hearts and minds of the listeners. Then people will open themselves up to the emotions. And that’s when the biochemical process starts. And possibly also the healing. In ancient Greece, music was prescribed by doctors as a form of medicine.”

In honour of his 40th birthday, Vengerov has given up his mobile phone.

“Fifteen years ago, when I had to memorise a telephone number, I would just hear it as a composition in my head, and then I would know it. Today I don’t even know my own numbers. Memory suffers, because life requires us to think less, to make less effort for greater results. As an artist, these are the qualities that I have to really fight for.

“Today everything has changed. Everybody likes to multi-task. We fly on aeroplanes, we listen to music on the way, we do business, there is music in the background, we take the elevator and again music is there.

“Shostakovich said, rightly, that great music deserves to be listened to with special attention. I think it also deserves to be separated from any visual effects. In other words the mission of the greatest music is to stimulate our hearing.

“We like to say that we are what we eat. We like organic vegetables and we know that we need to eat well. It’s the same thing with music. We have to be selective, and make educated choices.

“This is why we make music. It’s a form of exile from the rush.”

Interview by Shirley Apthorp, photos by Keith Saunders

Maxim Vengerov performs in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney from 28 November – 10 December. Tickets go on Sale 1 October 2015. For more information, please visit:  www.musicaviva.com.au/vengerov

On The Vine – November 2014 – Ray Chen with Timothy Young

The first time I heard Ray Chen play violin live was at the Huntington Estate Music Festival in 2010, where he brought the house down more than once, including an impossibly assured performance of Ysaÿe’s fiendishly difficult Sonata for Two Violins alongside Dene Olding. He also treated us to a stellar version of Bach’s Chaconne (from Partita no 2), Chausson’s “Concert” (accompanied by piano quintet) and Schubert’s luscious Rondo for Violin and Strings with the Chamber Orchestra of the Australian National Academy of Music. He played quite a lot of other music as well, but I now find it hard to believe that he was able to present so much incredible repertoire in just four days!

Since then Ray has become a true global phenomenon, having given major performances alongside the great artists of the world in concert halls at every corner of it. It is a great thrill to have him undertaking his first Australian concert tour with Musica Viva this month, culminating in his long anticipated return to the Huntington Festival, once again in the company of the ANAM Chamber Orchestra.

I endorse Bartók’s proposition that competitions are better suited to horses than artists, but it might have taken the world a lot longer to discover Ray Chen’s prodigious talent if he hadn’t won both the Yehudi Menuhin (2008) and Queen Elisabeth (2009) Competitions by the age of 20. The first of these musical races also put him in touch with one particular jury member, the incredible violin virtuoso, and Ray’s childhood idol, Maxim Vengerov. Although Ray would certainly have risen to prominence sooner or later, Vengerov’s support and mentorship helped ensure that this happened a lot sooner than later.

The program for Ray’s November concert tour closes with archetypal pyrotechnics in a set of showpieces by Sarasate, including the iconic Zigeunerweisen. These grow from a decidedly serious ground, however, being preceded by Bach’s incredible E major Partita for unaccompanied violin. The first half of the program helps display other sides of Ray’s musical personality, moving from the classical elegance of Mozart’s A major Sonata (K305 ) to Prokofiev’s alternately beautiful, haunting and sparkling second Violin Sonata.

Ray’s first commercial CD was recorded in Australia, accompanied by outstanding Melbourne pianist Timothy Young. In a town that seems to have an inexhaustible supply of excellent pianists, Timothy stands out for the breadth of his expertise and his impressive combination of virtuosity and sensitivity. This concert tour unites the two for the first time since that recording.

Carl Vine AO
Artistic Director

For more information on Ray Chen with Timothy Young, and to book your tickets, please visit; www.musicaviva.com.au/chen

Four Stars – Angela Hewitt Review in the Sydney Morning Herald

Bach’s Art of Fugue by Angela Hewitt

Musica Viva. City Recital Hall. October 12

Reviewed by Peter McCallum, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October 2013

The last time I had the chance to hear a live performance of Bach’s The Art of Fugue in Sydney was when the late Norman Johnston played it in the opening season of Beckerath Organ in Sydney University’s Great Hall in the 1970s.

Though others may have scaled this austere peak since, Angela Hewitt’s performance on the piano over two recitals once again brought this apogee of musical thought to vivid life through sound.

Bach’s concept approaches the sentiment expressed in Thomas Mann’s great musical philosophical novel Dr Faustus that perhaps it was music’s fondest wish not to be heard at all but to exist in pure thought.

Bach did not indicate the intended instrumental or vocal forces, though with the exception of the “mirror fugues”, (Contrapunctus XII and XIII), it is playable by a single keyboardist without adjustment.

Hewitt’s achievement is to bring its abstract purity to memorable tonal embodiment by providing an emotional context that audiences connect with. This program took up where program one had left off with Contrapunctus XI, a rich four-part fugue inverting the themes of Contrapunctus VIII.

In the “mirror fugues”, Bach wrote pieces in which both the parts and the direction of melody can be turned upside-down, so that the bass of one version is inverted to become the soprano of its mirror. Hewitt gave the first pair sombre depth and the second scurrying vitality.

The four canons had distinctive expressive personality, before the final incomplete fugue on three themes.

It is generally believed Bach intended to introduce the Art of Fugue motto theme in as a fourth idea but the manuscript stops just as he is combining his name with the other two. Like Johnston, Hewitt allowed the abrupt cut-off to speak for itself, finishing with his final chorale-prelude “Vor Deinem Thron’ tret ich” and a somewhat overdone pause.

The first half opened with Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in which Hewitt preserved spontaneity in the flourish and continued with Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Opus 110 (which also uses inverted fugues), in which she adopted a reverent, even sanctified mood, pausing and drawing back to emphasise expressive points.

“Music making of undeniable authority” – The Age on Angela Hewitt

Bach specialist shows mastery

September 26, 2013

Reviewed by Martin Duffy, The Age

ANGELA HEWITT
Melbourne Recital Centre
September 24 and 28

Hailed as one of the leading pianists of her generation, Canadian Angela Hewitt has devoted a career to performing and recording the keyboard works of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Her celebrated recordings have recently been completed with the addition of his final great masterpiece The Art of Fugue, BWV1080. Such is the musical and intellectual challenge for both performer and audience alike that Hewitt has divided its 14 fugues (contrapunctus) and four canons over two separate performances.

To begin, Hewitt played arrangements by Wilhelm Kempff of three earlier Bach works – the choral prelude Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (Come now, saviour of the heathen) BWV659, the tender Siciliano from the Flute Sonata in E flat major BWV1031 and the rousing Sinfonia in D major from Cantata No. 29, BWV29. This mini sampler clearly showed the evenness and independence of her hands, her ability to delineate and express multiple voices, and sensitive pedalling that exploits the opportunities of the modern keyboard while retaining a character that Bach would presumably still find familiar.

Beethoven’s Sonata No. 28 in A major, op 101 was a brief respite from Bach, although still continuing the contrapuntal theme. While missing the romanticism of more familiar interpretations, Hewitt’s clarity – particularly in its finale – unveiled different emphases.

Whether your entry point is Bach’s religious devotion, the intellectual and musicological masterpiece of its construction or the sheer beauty of its unfolding sounds, Hewitt’s artistry and interpretation of The Art of Fugue was music making of undeniable authority.

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For more information on Angela Hewitt’s tour with Musica Viva, including performance dates, program and ticket sales, visit musicaviva.com.au/hewitt

Angela Hewitt | Masterly Performance in Melbourne

Angela Hewitt took to the stage and keys in Melbourne last night, marking her first performance of nine in Musica Viva’s national 2013 International Concert Season.

Hewitt performed a delightful program of Bach selections (arr. by Wilhelm Kempf for piano), Beethoven Piano Sonata no 28 in A major, op 101 and Contrapunctus I-X of Bach’s famed “Art of Fugue”. Next stop – Perth, before returning to Melbourne to complete the “Art” with Conrapunctus XI to XIV on Saturday 28 September. For tour dates, complete program lists and more information, visit musicaviva.com.au/hewitt.

The audience at last night’s performance would have also noticed the presence of some modern technology on the stand. Hewitt performed from the score on her iPad, mounted on her instrument’s music stand, using a discrete foot-pedal for her “page-turns”. We hope she charges her battery before performances!

Jian Wang, on Working with Bernadette Harvey

As we welcome the internationally acclaimed cellist Jian Wang to Australian shores, we thought to share this video, where Jian discusses his work with Australian pianist Bernadette Harvey.

Jian Wang and Bernadette Harvey first performed together at the 2006 Huntington Estate Music Festival – the first presented in association with Musica Viva. When presented with the opportunity to perform again with Musica Viva, Jian immediately enquired about Bernadette’s availability.

Jian and Bernadette rehearsed together today for the first time since their appearance at Huntington. Together, they will perform Schnittke’s Cello Sonata no 1 and Brahms’ Cello Sonata no 2, along with Bach’s Suites no 1 and 6 for unaccompanied cello, Puts’ ‘Alternating Current’ and Vine’s Piano Sonata no 1, in concerts as part of Musica Viva’s International Concert Season.

For more information including performance dates, times and locations, visit musicaviva.com.au/wang