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31 October 2011
Published in The New Zealand Herald, By William Dart
Wilma Smith was a familiar figure on home ground when she led the New Zealand String Quartet and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in the 1980s and 90s. Now she is back in the country with Melbourne's Ensemble Liaison, giving 10 concerts under the auspices of Chamber Music New Zealand.
The violinist is still content with her day job as concertmaster of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. "The great conductors are amazing to work with," she says. "And there are still those extraordinary revelations, even though you may have done a particular piece lots of times before."
She pauses when asked for a favourite but Andrew Davis is acknowledged for his "no-nonsense approach and tenacity in getting what he wants. I've just played Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending with the orchestra and he paid me the greatest compliment by saying, 'You know, you could be English'."
Smith also likes the buzz of being just a metre away from soloists such as the Canadian James Ehnes who, in her opinion, is "the best living violinist".
"The level of perfection is gobsmacking," she adds. "This man is incapable of making a haphazard sound. There's never a rough note."
Over the years, Smith's love of chamber music has never deserted her, even if she does offer a rather wide-ranging definition of the term.
"Unless you're out there playing by yourself, all music is chamber music. Orchestral music's just big chamber music. Nevertheless, getting back into playing quartets and trios is definitely the icing on the cake and a wonderful thing to do."
Ensemble Liaison is "a real energised, get-up-and-go group" and, on Tuesday, Aucklanders can hear them in Beethoven's Gassenhauer Trio, Bartok's Contrasts and Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time. (Hamiltonians have Messiaen a night later, but coupled with Haydn and Brahms.)
Smith says Messiaen's mystical masterpiece, penned and premiered in a prisoner-of-war camp in 1941, "is a great journey that I'd always wanted to take but, by the time you get to the end, you're totally wrung out.
"Ensemble Liaison has a great store of encores, some of which cross over into klezmer and all sorts of exciting fusiony things, but we can't do one. There's just no way anything can follow the Messiaen."
The group brings with them their inspired new recording of the work on the Australian Melba label, coupled with a marvellous 1896 Trio for clarinet cello and piano by Alexander von Zemlinsky.
Bartok wrote his Contrasts in 1938 with jazz clarinettist Benny Goodman in mind and Smith feels that Ensemble Liaison's David Griffiths is just the man for the job.
"He's flamboyant in the best sense of the word and has done a bit of jazz himself with Melbourne jazzman Tony Gould."
And what is the Bartok like for a violinist, taking on music written for the great Jozsef Szigeti? She pauses. "For me this is one of the most difficult pieces I've ever played and it will never get easy."
Smith, who left her native Fiji at the age of 4, is always blown away by the Pacific presence in our country and by how important music is in those cultures.
"It's a great thing that Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's Sistema Aotearoa project is tapping into this community, because ... music is big in these cultures. It's just a natural thing and, in time, I'm sure that the youngsters will come to any kind of music just as naturally."
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Tuesday 8pm; Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts, Waikato University, Hamilton, Wednesday at 8pm