Chamber Music in Adelaide

Australian String Quartet

The current membership of the Australian String Quartet holds the distinction of having won more international chamber music competitions than any other ensemble in Australian history including First Prize at the 2005 Cremona International String Quartet Competition, the Gold Medal in the 2002 Osaka International Chamber Music Competition (Japan) and Second Prize in the Paolo Borciani International String Quartet Competition in Italy in 2005. The ASQ has performed in many major European cities and throughout Australia, Germany, New Zealand and Japan. In 2009 the ASQ was invited to perform at the Beethovenhaus in Bonn as part of the Beethoven Festival and also for the Cheltenham, Lichfield and Buxton Festivals in the UK. Projects for 2010 include the world premiere of Brett Dean’s Viola Quintet.

Unity

WEDNESDAY 10 NOVEMBER, 7PM
Adelaide Town Hall, 128 King William Street, Adelaide

We open this program with the robust playfulness of Beethoven’s op.18 no.6, with its famous ‘la malinconia’ – ‘the melancholy’, the delicately tender introduction to the finale. Peter Sculthorpe’s extraordinary 6th string quartet expresses a more searing melancholy, while Dvorak’s A flat quartet, one of his last, seems to brim with joy and thanksgiving for a life well lived.