The Tokyo String Quartet Sends a Postcard from Australia

Clive Greensmith, cellist with the Tokyo string Quartet,  sends a note  and a few photos to us from the Quartet’s Australian tour.

Clive Greensmith, cellist, joined the Tokyo String Quartet in June 1999. A graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music and the Musikhochschule in Cologne, his principal teachers were Donald McCall and Boris Pergamenschikow. He has held the position of principal cellist of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. As a soloist, he has appeared with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic, English Chamber Orchestra, Mostly Mozart Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic, and the RAI Orchestra of Rome. He has collaborated with distinguished musicians such as András Schiff, Midori, Claude Frank and Steven Isserlis, and has won several prizes including second place in the inaugural Premio Stradivari held in Cremona, Italy. Mr. Greensmith has served on the faculties of the Royal Northern College of Music, Yehudi Menuhin School and San Francisco Conservatory of Music and is currently on the faculty of New York University. Mr. Greensmith’s recording of Brahms’ Sonatas with Boris Berman was recently released on the Biddulph label.

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Flying into wellington New Zealand

Here’s a little update from our Australian tour for the Norfolk blog:

We are now almost at then end of our Antipodean travels with a final concert tonight in Perth Concert Hall. Leaving home on June 1st is a very distant memory, made all the more obscure by some dauntingly long flights, the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, and three weeks of traveling that has taken us to some of the most beautiful parts of Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand. In the strikingly elegant surroundings of Auckland’s town hall, our tour got off to a good start with a program of quartets by Haydn and Brahms. Jet lag aside, it was a pleasure being back in such a beautiful country and we found audiences in both Auckland and Wellington very appreciative and enthusiastic. Perhaps because of its remoteness, New Zealanders strike me as being extraordinarily hospitable and appreciative. Indeed, they seem to approach the quartet medium with a particular reverence.

The view from our Melbourne hotel

One of the pleasures of touring can be impromptu reunions with old friends, students and colleagues. In Melbourne we had such an experience in meeting up with no less than two Norfolk Festival alumni ensembles, the Tinalley (Norfolk ’06) and Tailem Quartets (Norfolk ’08). For our second Melbourne performance, Lerid Delbridge, second violinist of the Tinalley Quartet had been asked to present a pre-concert talk and kindly invited me to participate. A gracious host, Lerida posed some very thoughtful questions in what was a refreshing change from the usual “Do you have to buy a second plane ticket for your cello?”……or “what happens when there is a disagreement in rehearsal?”

The Melbourne Recital Centre

The newly built Melbourne Recital Center is an outstanding hall with superb acoustics. In fact, we were so taken by the place that we wanted to find out more about the acoustician and the architect. Imagine my surprise a few days later, when after a rather tiring live broadcast in Adelaide Town Hall we trudged wearily across Victoria Square, a man stopped us and proclaimed “You’re the Tokyo String Quartet and I came to hear you last week in Melbourne…. I’m the architect of the new recital hall!”