Rapport of four creates dynamic combination

Christopher Costanza has been cellist with the St Lawrence String Quartet since 2003. I catch up with the ebullient New Yorker after the group's Palmerston North concert and - whether extolling that city's refurbished Regent Theatre or singing the praises of the "insanely inexpensive" computer phone call he has just made to family back home - his enthusiasm is infectious.

"I was aware all along what an active and exciting group the St Lawrence were," he says. "Here were musicians who had worked together for 14 years and built this rapport internally. I was lucky enough to tap into something that was already there."

Three years on, there are no complaints. A schedule of 200 nights on the road may be demanding but Chamber Music New Zealand has made their two weeks in this country a joy. "It's not so often that we deal with this high level of organisation," Costanza says.

In 2003 when the St Lawrence String Quartet made their first visit to Auckland, Osvaldo Golijov's Yiddishbbuk was its contemporary offering. Tonight, a piece by American Jonathan Berger sits between Mozart and Debussy.

Berger works alongside the SLSQ in the same faculty at Stanford University.

"His Doubles includes beautiful singing music, some crazed wild music and even a little bit of atonal music, although overall it's a very tonal piece," Costanza says.

"Jonathan builds on things that he sees as strengths in our playing, including the fact that we like big, beautiful tunes."

Having the composer just up the corridor paid dividends. "We were able to pull Jonathan into our rehearsals and ask him what he thought about this and that. He had just created this music and was happy to make alterations based on our thoughts and perceptions of it."

While ensembles such as Kronos Quartet specialise in the music of today, Costanza believes that contemporary music is most effective as part of a traditional concert programme.

"We like the balance. We usually play about 20 to 30 per cent of living composer repertoire but we always mix that with the likes of Beethoven, Mozart and Debussy. Audiences in America are quite receptive to new music when it's presented in this way.

"We feel so strongly about keeping the standard repertoire alive. We would happily play all the Haydn quartets if we could. We wouldn't want to miss out on that.

"It's been a pretty active year for good old Wolfgang," is Costanza's response when I ask him about Mozart's Dissonance Quartet, which opens the Auckland concert.

"This is a very large-scale, mature work that is full of everything you want - surprises, good positive striving energy, beauty and wonderful themes."

With a score as all-embracing as this, there must be special demands when it comes to putting it across to an audience.

"Although I have never acted," Costanza says, "I do believe from watching good actors that the successful ones feel they are the person being portrayed.

"Although we are not playing characters as such, we are pulling emotions and ideas from within the music in order to communicate them to the audience.

"This means that we have to absorb ourselves within the music as much as possible to make that happen.

"It is tricky with string quartets because you have to present a unified idea. If the four players are coming from different places that's okay, but we still have to make sure we can put those places together to present the feeling that we have as a group."

When it comes to group dynamics, the St Lawrence String Quartet have one of the best.

* St Lawrence String Quartet at the Auckland Town Hall, 8pm tonight