Australian String Quartet mix old with exciting new
THE Australian String Quartet has always stayed true to its mission statement through all its changes of personnel over the past 33 years.
Wentworth Courier
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THE Australian String Quartet has always prided itself on combining established works from the chamber music repertoire with challenging and often exciting new pieces from contemporary Australian composers, all played on the ensemble’s impeccable group of Guadagnini instruments.
Since its formation at Adelaide’s Elder Conservatorium of Music 33 years ago it has gone through several changes of line-up but has always stayed true to its mission statement, and its last tour for 2018 was no exception.
With the ASQ’s cellist Sharon Grigoryan off on maternity leave, Kiwi born and bred Ensemble Offspring regular Blair Harris slotted in seamlessly for a program which mixed familiar Schubert and Shostakovich works with a groundbreaking world premiere of James Ledger’s The Distortion Mirror, a piece commissioned by the ASQ featuring electronic loops and special effects.
The evening started with Schubert’s 13th quartet, Rosamund, the shortest of the three late quartets composed near the end of his short life. Instead of going to his songs for material, as he did with Death and the Maiden and the Trout Quintet, Schubert makes liberal use of themes from his failed opera Rosamund — hence the nickname.
This was nicely balanced performance by Dale Barltrop and his colleagues, and the ensemble work was particularly impressive with Harris blending in as if he’d been an ASQ member for years.
Barltrop as always impressed with his sweet and accurate phrasing and sensitivity to tempo and dynamic nuance and Francesca Hiew proved an impeccable safe pair of hands in the all-important second violin part, which gets the ball rolling and rarely stops with tricky string crossing chordal passages and some impressive runs mimicking the lead violin.
Stephen King never disappoints and he has always been one of our most impressive violists going back to his years with the ACO.
Ledger’s quartet — his second, his first Processions was written for the ASQ in 2011 ¬— is in four movements, each of those in two parts exploring opposites or a duality. Ledger got his idea from fair ground mirrors which distort the person’s image, sometimes comically, sometimes grotesquely.
Ledger’s music is always approachable and full of interesting ideas, both musically and philosophically
Former ABC sound engineer Adele Conlin became a fifth member of the ASQ, working from a score at a console at the back of the auditorium. The four musicians, with microphones attached to their instruments, played in real time with or against the sonic effects caught on the tape.
Ledger has written a program for each movement and in one of them he imagines he has fallen upwards and then looks back down to earth, falling back clumsily in the next movement.
Ledger’s music is always approachable and full of interesting ideas, both musically and philosophically. This listener for one would love to hear both his works for the ASQ recorded, perhaps with some other commissioned pieces from their repertoire.
Shostakovich seems to be flavour of the week with the redoubtable Borodin Quartet featuring two of his quartets on their current tour for Musica Viva. The ASQ chose the 10th of the 15 for their program and a superb performance it was.
Composed in1964 at an artists’ retreat in Soviet Russia, the work finds him in a relaxed mood at the opening but still with plenty of bite and power, especially in the second movement. His health was not good, which might account for this angry allegro furioso, played with plenty of fury by the ASQ, which at one point turned the volume down to half with great effect before beefing it up again.
DETAILS
● CONCERT: Australian String Quartet
● WHERE: City Recital Hall Angel Place
● WHEN: Wednesday, October 18