...Thank you for a wonderful evening yesterday! Words cannot express the joy to be had in attending such a concert. With grateful thanks, and looking forward to your next visit....
(Audience member, Palmerston North, 2018)
Friday, August 31, 2012 - 3:35pm

31 August 2012 - What's better than the sound of a cello? Audiences in Hamilton, Greytown, Auckland, Lower Hutt, Christchurch and Palmerston North will have the opportunity to experience the sound of TWO cellos in one of the greatest chamber music works ever written. The Wellington-based Aroha String Quartet, together with New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Principal Cellist Andrew Joyce, will perform Schubert's String Quintet in C in a six-centre tour in September and October.

Andrew Joyce said ""It's always such a joy to play this incredible piece and I look forward to performing it with friends and colleagues from the NZSO. I have performed Schubert's C major Quintet many times before and it feels like an old friend, although only once or twice have I played the second cello part, so in some ways this tour with the Aroha Quartet will be a voyage of discovery for me."

The concert includes a work written by a young Hungarian composer Peter Tornyai. The members of the Aroha Quartet met Peter at the International Summer Academy, a summer music course they attended in Austria in 2010. "Peter wrote his 'Streichquintett' for us to play. We performed his piece in a concert on a railway platform amongst huge steam locomotives in a railway museum in Mürzzuschlag." said Haihong Liu, the Quartets' first violinist and member of the NZSO First Violins.

Péter Tornyai's short quintet was written in homage to Schubert. It makes extensive use of scordatura (retuning), creating a fascinating and evocative sound world.

The programme begins with Haydn's lovely 'Sunrise' Quartet.

The concerts are:

Hamilton - Thursday 6 September
Greytown - Sunday 23 September
Auckland - Saturday 29 September
Lower Hutt - Sunday 30 September
Christchurch - Tuesday 2 October
Palmerston North - Thursday 4 October

Further details can be found in the calendar on the home page of this website.