Orava Quartet launch an album and world career

AUSTRALIAN audiences have known about Brisbane-based foursome Orava Quartet for years — now it’s the world’s turn.

Orava Quartet are poised on the verge of international stardom. Picture: Dylan Evans

• They'll all be raving about Orava
• Music with a cutting edge
• Out with the old and the new
• Carmen cuts it, Kombi and all

AUSTRALIAN audiences have known about Brisbane-based foursome Orava Quartet since they impressed everyone at the Musica Viva Festival in 2008 when they appeared in master classes with Juilliard Quartet violinist Earl Carlyss and gave an exceptional performance of Brahms Op 51 No. 1 quartet in a fringe concert at Custom House, Circular Quay.

Formed by Kowalik siblings Daniel and Sylwia (violins) and cellist Karol, with Thomas Chawner on viola, they displayed character and skill from the start, which blended with their natural youthful energy lent their performances a sense of excitement.

In 2011 David Dalseno took over second violin and in the intervening years the Oravas have spent a couple of years in the US as graduate ensemble in residence at the University of Colorado in Boulder, working closely with Takacs Quartet — arguably the finest quartet in the world at the moment. They also had a residency in Banff, Canada, and have picked up tips from other top groups like the Jerusalem, Emerson, Brentano and our own Goldener String Quartet.

Now this charismatic ensemble is about to reach an international audience with the release of their debut album on the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon yellow label.

GRIEF

To launch the disc they performed the all-Russian program in a return gig for the Utzon Series, held in Sydney Opera House’s Utzon Room overlooking the harbour.

To start they performed a rarity, Two Movements for String Quartet by Sergei Rachmaninov, one of two aborted attempts he made at the genre. The lyrical Romance and lively Scherzo, with its folksy dance-like feel, shows the young composer in the thrall of Tchaikovsky, whose first string quartet closed this recital.

These two romantic, passionate works sandwiched a piece of a very different ilk, Dmitri Shostakovich’s eighth quartet, composed in 1960 as a grief-stricken reaction to seeing the results of the bombing of Dresden in World War II. The composer was said to be feeling suicidal at the time after the breakup of his second marriage and originally intended the powerful work to be performed at his funeral.

For an encore the Oravas ended in a barnstorming flourish with a fast and furious short movement from a quartet by Erwin Schulhoff, a Czech composer who died in Auschwitz concentration camp.

DETAILS

● CONCERT: Utzon Series, Orava Quartet

● WHERE: Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House

● WHEN: Sunday, February 18