The Melbourne Recital Centre audience was already cheering when the Australian String Quartet (ASQ) – Dale Barltrop, Francesca Hiew, Chris Cartlidge and Michael Dahlenburg – emerged onstage to begin the final performance of its national tour of Rapture. But this rapturous welcome nevertheless paled in comparison with the thunderous applause the ASQ received at the end of this truly remarkable evening.
It promised to be an eclectic program: a middle period Beethoven quartet (1810), Janáček’s Intimate Letters (1928), the cosmic Tenebrae by contemporary Argentinian-born composer Golijov (2000), and a brand new work, No Feeling is Final, by Australian jazz musician, Vanessa Perica (2025). In fact, presenting these four fascinating works in the same program turned out to be pure genius.
Beethoven’s eleventh string quartet, Op. 95, dubbed Serioso by the composer himself, was the last from Beethoven’s middle period. ASQ leader Dale Barltrop called it “concise”. This relatively short work has everything we expect in vintage Beethoven – in microcosm.
The ASQ gave a fresh and vibrant interpretation of this well-known work, providing ample opportunity to relish the players’ extreme musicality and the rich warmth of the four Guadagninis.
No Feeling is Final is accomplished jazz musician and composer Vanessa Perica’s first string quartet and received its world premiere by the ASQ on this tour. Dale Barltrop introduced this work, describing how delighted he was – having previously marked Perica out as a kindred spirit during her collaboration with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra on Love is a Temporary Madness – to find she was ready to write a string quartet.
Though written two hundred years later on the other side of the world, this debut quartet was a good match for the Beethoven. Perica’s work also takes the audience on a musical journey, launched by the news that Perica’s partner required heart surgery, and ending with an “invigorating yet angsty” experience in New York. The four movements are not merely contrasting in a formalistic sense. With constantly shifting tonalities, jazz rhythms, shades of Gershwin and a satisfying interweaving of the quartet’s four voices, Perica tells a story that is engaging on both an emotional and a musical level.
Janáček’s Intimate letters concerns the composer’s love for Kamila, a married woman with whom Janáček maintained a long and amorous correspondence. Written near the end of his life, this final declaration of love is variously buoyant, energetic, tender, lyrical and intense, but invariably passionate
After the intensity of Intimate Letters, Golijov’s Tenebrae was cathartic.
The stage lights were dimmed, and behind the players the stage was illuminated with a constellation of golden orbs. Out of the depths comes a resonant and decidedly cosmic vibration (cello) that builds until, through a fractured rhythmic motif, a sublime melody takes form.
Golijov recounts that he was impelled to write Tenebrae by two extreme experiences: a visit to a planetarium at home in the USA and witnessing war during a visit to Israel. Drawing on Couperin’s Troisième Leçon de Tenebrae and Jewish religious chant, Golijov sought to create a musical experience where, beneath a beautiful surface, “the music is full of pain”. In this performance, there were moments of extreme intensity, but these were ultimately overwhelmed by the countless moments of extreme beauty.
This review has concentrated on the feelings evoked in this program because the combined effect of these four works was both unexpected and striking. But the review would not be complete without mentioning the ASQ’s extreme individual and collective musicianship: Barltrop’s sensitive and insightful leadership, the lyrical duets between the upper strings, the stand-out viola and cello solos and the unwavering empathy between all the players.
This was a moving conclusion to a remarkable performance by a superb ensemble.
Photo credit: Laura Manariti
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Sue Kaufmann attended the Australian String Quartet’s performance of “Rapture” at the Melbourne Recital Centre on May 22, 2025.
