New Zealand String Quartet - String Quartets 3 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Gerhard Frommel rejected vapid pre-war Nationalism and Schoenberg's dodecaphony, finding his voice in individuality and tradition. His piano sonatas are rooted in Romanticism and allied to the expressive plasticity of Stravinsky and Hindemith, articulated with vitality and tenderness in No. 1, sparseness and clownish grotesquerie in No. 2, and the sensual impressionism of No. 3. Pianist Tatjana Blome won first prize at the Steinway Competition at the age of twelve and gave her first full-length piano recital a year later. She studied with Josef-Matthias Blome, Renate Kretschmar-Fischer, Heidrun Holtmann, Aribert Reimann and Gerhard Oppitz, and as a student also devoted her time to German literature and theology. She made her d+-but in the Berlin Philharmonic concert hall in 1995 with Johannes Brahms's First Piano Concerto.

The New Zealand String Quartet' first Naxos recording of Mendelssohn' string quartets was praised as 'an auspicious start' by Gramophone and 'opulently recorded' by Classic FM magazine. It's warmly affectionate accounts continue with this second of t.

This programme brings together aesthetic and musical elements of East and West. Zhou Long captures the essence of the Chinese plucked ch'in and Cambodian aesthetics are preserved in Chinary Ung's expressive Spiral III. Tan Dun's Eight Colors combines the exotic timbres of Peking Opera with Second Viennese School tonalities. Gao Ping's Bright Light and Cloud Shadows has been admired for it's 'long-breathed brush strokes' (Washington Post). Taking it's inspiration from James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake Toru Takemitsu's beautifully crafted a Way a Lone evokes a shimmering sound world.