New Zealander Simone Roggen has studied in Switzerland and performed as a soloist and chamber musician in Europe. In 2012 she was invited to lead the Cologne-based Faust Quartet, which had won second prize in 2004 at the world’s largest international music contest – the ARD contest in Munich. An invitation to perform at the Sydney Chamber Music Festival gives New Zealand audiences the chance to hear them as well.
Schubert dominates the programme, starting with the Quartettsatz (‘Quartet movement’), obviously unfinished but complete in itself; and ending with his supreme masterpiece, the Death and the Maiden Quartet. In between we hear Quadriga for String Quartet by Helena Winkelmann, who was born in Switzerland in 1974; her music, in an idiom essentially of our time and technically very demanding, is nevertheless expressive and immediately engaging.
Visit the Faust Quartet’s website.
Hear the Faust Quartet play Webern’s beautiful Langsamer Satz (1905).
Past ConcertsSunday 31 August 2014 - St Andrew's on The Terrace | 
