Sunday 22nd April at 2.30pm

In 2004 New Zealand’s John Chen became the youngest ever winner of the Sydney International Piano Competition, also taking prizes for best performances of classical composers, chamber music and concerto. The previous year he won the Lev Vlassenko Australasian Piano Competition, and the following year graduated from the University of Auckland. Since then he has performed around the world and recorded CDs of piano works by Henri Dutilleux, Debussy and Ravel. In 2009 John’s Saguaro Piano Trio won the Hamburg International Chamber Music Competition. Following a period teaching at the Hamburg Musikhochschule, John has recently been living and teaching in Zambia.

His recital programme offers us the rare chance to hear one of Handel’s great keyboard suites, often overlooked in favour of the suites and partitas of Bach. More familiar will be Chopin’s much-loved second sonata, known as the “Funeral March Sonata”. The second half of John’s programme will introduce us to the Sonata by Paul Dukas, a French composer best known for his orchestral work The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Written around 1900, this sonata led Debussy to write “Monsieur Dukas knows what music is made of: it is not just brilliant sound designed to beguile the ear… it is an endless treasure trove of possible forms and souvenirs”.

Sunday 25th March at 2.30pm

Having celebrated their 30th Anniversary in 2017, the New Zealand String Quartet make a welcome return to our stage, this time with a new member. 2nd violinist Doug Beilman stepped down at the end of 2015 and has been replaced by Australian violinist Monique Lapins. The quartet presents a vast array of concerts throughout New Zealand each year as well as regularly touring overseas to the UK, Europe, North America, China and Japan. Frequent visits to Australia have included appearances at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville and the Canberra International Music Festival.

Opus 127 is the first of Beethoven’s six “late quartets”. A somewhat tender and introverted work, it contains one of Beethoven’s most sublimely expressive slow movements. The Quartettsatz is one of the most popular and important works in Schubert’s chamber music repertoire, despite being just a single movement from a quartet that was never completed. To round off a concert of contrasts will be Debussy’s String Quartet, a brilliant work of stunning originality. In 1999 the NZSQ released a CD of the Debussy and Fauré Quartets. Amongst enthusiastic reviews, the Washington Post said: “The New Zealanders gave Debussy’s G minor quartet a dreamy, shivering elegance”.