Orava Quartet on road to international stardom
THE Orava Quartet is a well-kept Australian musical secret but they are about to be unleashed on the international scene with their spectacular debut album.
Wentworth Courier
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BRISBANE-based Orava Quartet, formed by the Kowalik siblings Daniel and Sylwia (violins) and cellist Karol, originally from Mount Annan in western Sydney, with Thomas Chawner on viola, first sprang to prominence in Australia when they performed as an up-and-coming ensemble at the 2008 Musica Viva Festival.
Three years later David Dalseno took over second violin and the charismatic foursome spent a couple of years in the US as graduate ensemble in residence at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where they worked closely with the Takacs Quartet among many other leading ensembles and chamber musicians.
Now this well-kept Australian musical secret is about to be unleashed on the international scene with their debut album of all-Russian works on the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon yellow label.
This is a remarkably mature set of performances from the Orava. There’s a wonderful contrast between the heart-on-sleeve melodic world of Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — played here with admirable restraint and with just the right amount of feeling — and the stark, confronting soundscape of Dmitri Shostakovich’s tragic eighth quartet.
This work is in many ways his most personal with his famous musical signature — the notes D, E flat, C and B natural which in German read as DSCH or the first letters of his name — etched into the score throughout. It was also the work that he wanted to be his requiem.
LANGUID
Acting as a buffer between these two great quartets is a rarity from another great Russian composer, Sergei Rachmaninov.
He made two attempts at a string quartet, both unfinished and both comprising two short movements. The first, which is featured on this disc, is called Two Movements for String Quartet and the first of them, a languid slow Romance, is a perfect complement to the Tchaikovsky work which precedes it.
The four of them play like a group of seasoned professionals but with a youthful eye to taking risks.
For his part Tchaikovsky made some false starts at the genre, but his first quartet was written very quickly — in just two weeks — and it contains one of the most beautiful and best-loved slow movements, which he later orchestrated as a stand-alone piece simply titled Andante cantabile. It’s supposedly based on a folk tune that the composer heard a house painter whistling.
Daniel Kowalik’s leads into the movement with his sweet muted lines, but this is a delightful ensemble piece in which the tune is passed around, with Karol’s pizzicato cello lending a swinging lilt to its middle section.
The four of them play like a group of seasoned professionals but with a youthful eye to taking risks. Witness the hair-raising short second movement of the Shostakovich — this is a visceral two-and-a-half minutes or so, wonderfully controlled but with waspish attack.
After the dark mood of this quartet South Australian soprano Greta Bradman, another rising star in the Australian and international music scene, brings a soothing balm with a rich performance of Rachmaninov’s wordless Vocalise. A satisfying end to the Oravas’ mighty debut on the renowned Yellow Label.
You can get Orava Quartet from Fish Fine Music for $21.99.