Audio

Gillian Whitehead - Puhake ki te rangi

Music for European and Maori traditional instruments. See more on the SOUNZ website or listen now.

“In 1989, I heard for the first time, in a presentation given by Richard Nunns, the sounds of the taonga puoro (singing treasures), which spoke to me very strongly of the spirituality of my Maori heritage. I began working with these instruments several years later, and I have found myself drawn to explore in my own language the world of sound that might have surrounded pre-European Maori. Though the function of the instruments was of course very different in that world, I have tried to use them in a way that does relate to their traditional use.” - Gillian Whitehead, composer

2008 Atoll CD Ltd ACD 107
Producer: Wayne Laird

Bartók - The Complete String Quartets

Two CD set featuring all six Bartok string quartets.

2009 Atoll CD Ltd. ACD 119

Originally issued as CD Manu 1551/3 (1998 Ode Records)

Producer: Tom Rolston

Engineers: Martin Williams, Keith Warren

Digital editing and mastering: Wayne Laird

Berg: String Quartet / Lyric Suite / Wolf: Italian Serenade

Alban Berg’s two works for string quartet alone are enough to place him with the foremost exponents of the quartet medium during the first half of the twentieth century. The String Quartet, Op. 3, completed in 1910, is both a graduation exercise and also the composer’s first extended foray into the non-tonal regions that were then being explored by Schoenberg and Webern. Berg’s highly expressive Lyric Suite, inspired by his love-affair with the wife of a family friend, is notable for its unconventional six-movement form, the odd-numbered of which become progressively faster and more disruptive, while the even numbered ones become progressively slower and more intense. Hugo Wolf’s Italian Serenade is a lighthearted piece later orchestrated as the first movement of a larger suite. Listen now.

June 2007 Naxos Classical Catalogue 8.557374
Producer: Wayne Laird
Engineer: Paul McGlashan

Debussy & Ravel

A CD recording of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel's string quartets.

1999 Atoll CD Ltd ACD 399

Producer: Wayne Laird

Engineer: Sam Negri

Magical Mozart Tour

Selected movements recorded live with Péter Nágy (piano) on the Magical Mozart Tour, 2006.

"This CD celebrates Mozart's 250th year and offers highlights of the Magical Mozart Tour given by the NZSQ and pianist Péter Nágy throughout New Zealand in 2006. You will head movements from each of the set of six quartets that Mozart dedicated to Haydn, known as the "Haydn" Quartets, and from each of Mozart's great Piano Quartets. Recorded live on tour, these movements have been chosen especially to invite the listener into the genius of Mozart in all its guises. Inspired by the new way of writing for quartet that he heard in Haydn's Opus 33 Quartets, and by his weekly visits to his patron van Swieten's vast collection of Bach manuscripts, the mature Mozart is here heard at his most daring, breaking new ground with shocking dissonances, breathtaking virtuosity, masterful counterpoint, comic dialogue, profound introspective moods and infectious playfulness." - Rolf Gjelsten

Recording Producer: Wayne Laird

Engineer: Paul McGlashan

Editing and Mastering: Atoll