Ross Edwards looks to troubled times in his new string quartet

The Australian String Quartet continues its series of hour-long Sunday afternoon subscription webcasts with a world premiere of Sydney composer Ross Edwards’s fourth quartet.

Ross Edwards’ fourth quartet has been given its world premiere by the ASQ in a webcast. Picture: James Croucher

• Silk purses from a pig's ear
• Top flight Beethoven treat
• Rewind to times past
• Two key releases from piano greats

The Australian String Quartet continues its series of hour-long Sunday afternoon subscription webcasts with a world premiere of Sydney composer Ross Edwards’s fourth quartet.

In this fourth episode of the ASQ series Edwards explains that string quartets are always “challenging yet fulfilling” to write, fitting in with his composing style of exploring and resolving disparity.

The new work is in three movements. The first, titled Unity, is led off by Sharon Grigorynan’s cello and explores the need to rebalance our relationship with nature, here mainly represented by morning birdsong, with references to a “Magnificat” – Edwards’s metaphor for Mother Nature – jostling with a catchy and joyful African folk tune.

The second movement, Orison, is a moving and timely reaction to the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand, which Edwards heard about just as he started work on it, as well as other atrocities throughout the world. It contains a moving plainsong passage where the ASQ’s Guadagnini instruments are played without vibrato, much like a choir of renaissance viols.

There are also references to the Muslim call to prayer.

OPTIMISM

In the final movement, Union, “optimism surges back” with joyful nature punctuated by parrot shrieks and a celebration of the 50 years of enduring love of Ron and Therese Riley, who commissioned the work.

The performance in the Ukaria concert hall in the heart of the Adelaide Hills before a small live audience is stunning. The quartet – Dale Barltrop and Francesca Hiew, violins, violist Stephen King and Grigoryan – are in top form and obviously relishing being able to perform live again.

The webcast presenter, singer Johanna Allen, joins the quartet after the premiere piece with Come Rain Or Come Shine by Howard Arlen, who is best known for the songs he composed for The Wizard of Oz.

Subscriptions to the series cost $40 and subscribers can watch previous webcasts in the series until the end of October. Next up is Mozart’s Dissonance Quartet (August 30); Matthew Hindson’s Quartet No. 3 (September 6); Shostakovich’s No. 3 (September 13), and the series winds up with Tempesta and a new work by Joe Chindamo (September 20).