Musical curation in string series

Gillian Ansell, Helene Pohl, Douglas Beilman and Rolf Gjelsten of the New Zealand String Quartet. Photo / Supplied

There is a glow in Rolf Gjelsten's voice as he talks about the New Zealand String Quartet's recent participation in the City of London Festival.

"It was a real coming-of-age experience, even though we've played two Wigmore Hall concerts in the past," the cellist says. "It seems a cliche to say that we felt like cultural ambassadors, but we really felt the power of sharing our music."

Gjelsten and his colleagues are in town with their new Hungarian Rhapsodies concerts, this year's instalment of their annual touring programme. "It's such a luxury doing our own series every year, a privilege that many quartets don't have," he says. "We put related pieces in a context that will hopefully help the audience to find a deeper, spiritual level of communication."

I suggest it makes them sound like musical cousins to visual arts curators but Gjelsten prefers a more homely analogy: "It's like what you do in your house when it comes to interior decorating. You make sure that things reflect each other in some way, whether they are juxtaposed or congruous."

The bicentenary of Liszt provides an anchor for the concerts, with a selection of his piano works played by Hungarian pianist Peter Nagy, who "learned to hear the music from the inside out. He's got a virtuoso technique but you don't get that impression when you hear him playing. You get the feeling that he's conceiving and creating."

On Friday you can enjoy the special partnership of piano and strings in the Second Piano Quintet of Erno Dohnanyi (1877-1960). The composer's First Quintet is the more popular, possibly because "it's almost like a medley of Hollywood tunes". "The Second still has the Hollywood aspect but more mysterious atmospheres float their way through the score," Gjelsten says.

Two Bartok quartets make a nostalgic connection with the NZSQ's groundbreaking tour of the complete Bartok cycle in 1995. "We wanted to show just how romantic the Second Quartet is."

By contrast, the later Fourth is "bent on creating some extraordinary effects as well as incorporating the full gamut of Bartok's interest in folk music. With some composers all these effects might seem gratuitous but here they're all integrated into a very powerful spiritual voice."

As for the First Quartet of Gyorgy Ligeti, the often wildly eccentric composer who made his name when some of his music appeared on the soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey , "it's directly inspired by the Bartok Fourth", Gjelsten says.

"Ligeti wrote it for his shelf in 1953, which gave him the licence to do what he wanted, because it wasn't necessarily going to be performed by anybody."

Saturday's Brahms G minor Quartet, with pianist Nagy, was a suggestion from the NZSQ's manager, Elizabeth Kerr. For five years Kerr has given her musicians what Gjelsten describes as "a feeling of limitless potential".

It was Kerr who suggested Saturday's quartet, in order to balance the programme. "Having her there does give us the licence to go to an extreme because we know she'll pull us back into shape like a good parent."

Performance

What: New Zealand String Quartet

Where and when: St Matthew-in-the-City, Friday at 6.30pm; Saturday, August 27 at 2.30pm