NZ String Quartet and friends performing at the Aotearoa New Zealand Arts Festival Photo: Aotearoa NZ Festival of the Arts
Performed by Helene Pohl, Monique Lapins, Malavika Gopal & Anna Van der Zee (violins), Gillian Ansell & Alexander McFarlane (violas), Rolf Gjelsten & Andrew Joyce (cellos) at the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts 2022.
Enescu laboured for a year and a half over this vast octet. "I wore myself out” he said, “trying to make work a piece of music divided into four segments of such length, that each of them was likely at any moment to break. An engineer launching his first suspension bridge over a river, could not feel more anxiety than I felt when I set out to darken my paper".
The Octet is a moody, impassioned work, with rich string textures, layered counterpoint, and a highly chromatic harmonic language. There are also the modal influences of Eastern European folk melodies that find their way into Enescu’s music. Three of the four movements follow one another without a break.
Rolf Gjelsten and Andrew Joyce performing at the Aotearoa New Zealand Arts Festival Photo: Aotearoa NZ Festival of the Arts
Helene Pohl and Monique Lapins performing at the Aotearoa New Zealand Arts Festival Photo: Aotearoa NZ Festival of the Arts
Recorded 12 March 2022, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington by RNZ Concert
Producer: David McCaw
Sound Engineer: Darryl Stack
