2015 is quite the year for anniversaries of Australian artistic groups. Musica Viva Australia celebrates its 70 year anniversary in style this year. As Musica Viva’s International Concert Season 2015 continues, we hear the Goldner String Quartet during its twentieth anniversary.
Pleasurable parallels link these events as it was the quartet’s namesake Richard Goldner who founded Musica Viva seventy-years ago. Goldner was also teacher to violist Irina Morozova from this quartet.
The contrasting works in this anniversary concert all celebrate modernity, contemporary trends and forward musical thinking. As is beginning to develop in concert practice, the performance becomes multi-dimensional via images played in real time with the music. In this concert installations are conceived by video designer Sean Bacon.
A cutting-edge concept currently energising many areas of consumerism is that of ‘crowd-funding’. The audience looking forward to the 2014 Huntingdon Estate Music Festival are in part responsible for commissioning Paul Stanhope’s third string quartet.
The result of this demand is an unmistakably new work by Stanhope referencing some dramatic clashes between early settlers and the First Australians. Musical atmospheres and a myriad of string effects are supported by photography on the screen behind the players of landscape and ruins in mostly slideshow style sequence.
A modern music highlight is the revolutionary ‘String Quartet No 1 Metamorphoses nocturnes’ by Ligeti. The concert’s most creative and cleverly slow paced, incremental video design is presented during this work. The refined and developed communicative synchronicity of the Goldner Quartet explores the seventeen sections in exciting detail.
The virtuosity, resolve and uncompromising unisons or extremes in this Ligeti work makes it an effective, accessible performance with strong entertainment value and instant impact. As impressive as the video installation is, it would possibly still succeed if the quartet is given more stage space between the outside of their arc and the beginning of the screen.
Beethoven’s intense five-movement quartet from his progressive final group of works in this genre ends the concert. The large, complex structure of ‘String Quartet No 15 in A minor, Op 132’ is a challenge in focus for both the players and audience, the various influences and scope on which they are developed are thrilling. The borrowed chorale tune is clear, penetrating and exquisitely rendered.
This Beethoven quartet is a long work to sit through for the end of the concert, but is well worth the effort. It remains a special work to have the opportunity to hear live. This calibre of chamber music landmark on the programme pays tribute to the achievements and maturity of the Goldner Quartet as well as Musica Viva.
The players of this forty-four minute work were backlit for the entirety by one static manuscript-inspired design. This busy page was unfortunately not as subtle as previous visuals, nor did it interact with the musical trajectories.
Audiences at anniversary concerts could perhaps anticipate safe options programmed in even summary of the artists’ repertoires. In this Musica Viva tour however, a fresh choice of works celebrates the current performance climate as well as twenty years of the Goldner String Quartet itself.
Musica Viva continues to assist in offering us experienced exponents of the genres and styles, quality chamber music and significant compositions in their time. The Goldner Quartet can be heard again at the City Recital Centre on Sunday 10 May at 2pm
For more about The Goldner String Quartet at City Recital Hall, visit http://www.musicaviva.com.au