Goldner String Quartet – Encounter

30 years of outstanding music-making concludes with a fitting finale and farewell.

In what is both beautiful and bittersweet for the chamber music community of music-lovers and music-makers alike, the Goldner String Quartet gives its last ever Melbourne performance.

Over 30 years, Goldner String Quartet (affectionately known as The Goldners), has garnered widespread recognition not only as Australia’s pre-eminent string quartet, but as a chamber ensemble of international significance and scale. The Goldners have toured throughout Australia, the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States of America, and the Asia Pacific – applauded for their impeccable artistry and chemistry that transforms every performance into a mesmerising masterclass in chamber music.

The Goldners have honed their golden sound over many years to achieve an intimate and innate understanding of each of the longstanding founding members’ musical ideas and sensibilities. They’re not just collaborators, they’re companions.

About the concert

For their final Melbourne performance and farewell, The Goldners have hand-picked a program that holds great meaning and significance for the ensemble.

Carl Vine’s exquisite String Quartet No.3 is a fitting celebration for the composer’s 70th birthday year, and whose works have featured memorably in The Goldners’ repertoire over many years.

The Goldners have chosen one of their favourite movements from Beethoven’s String Quartet No.15, Op.132, Heilige Dankgesang. This is a piece the quartet describes as a musical conduit for ‘how we can all relate to times in our lives when we have struggled to overcome illness and adversity. The extended movement is the consummate musical expression of this human condition.’

And to conclude Goldner String Quartet’s final performance, they gift Melbourne audiences with the Australian premiere of Pēteris Vasks’ recently composed String Quartet No.6. A profound, autumnal work that captures the feelings of a composer looking back over a long and fruitful life and drawing on much of the choral tradition of his native Latvia.