The Australian String Quartet (ASQ) performed its 2024 “Vanguard” program in the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall to a large audience on July 1, 2024.
The program opened with a late Beethoven quartet, Opus 127 – one of the pinnacles of the repertoire. It was commissioned by Nikolai Galitsin, a commission that Beethoven put on hold to write the ninth symphony.
Completed in 1825, this was his twelfth string quartet, written in the key of E flat. E flat was the key Beethoven chose, notably, for his third symphony (the Eroica) and his fifth piano concerto (the Emperor) and as such carries associations of majesty and authority. And so begins this quartet: with a bold chord that the ASQ attacked and sustained with vigour, and that heralded the start of an extraordinary musical journey.
What made this performance special was the ASQ’s perfectly blended sound – no doubt helped by a set of Guadagninis – and the care they took to bring out the nuances in the phrasing; the many twists and turns, sudden rhythmic interruptions and sustained lyrical passage that make this music so endlessly inspiring.
In this work, and throughout the performance, there seemed to be complete unity between the players, with cellist Michael Dahlenburg incidentally telling the emotional story of the music with his expressive gestures.
Before introducing Harry Sdraulig’s work, violinist Francesca Hiew explained that the ASQ had deliberately put Ludwig at the top of the program, filling the second half of the program with works by two composers considered to be at the vanguard in their respective fields: the Austrian composer, Erich Korngold, best known for his Hollywood film music but also prolific in other genres, and contemporary Australian composer, Harry Sdraulig.
The ASQ had played Sdraulig’s Swirl in 2020, but this was the first Melbourne performance of his second string quartet, which premiered in Perth at the launch of the ASQ’s Vanguard tour.
Though presented as a single movement, String Quartet No. 2 comprises several distinctly different episodes. It opened with, in Sdraulig’s own words, with “an icy, crystalline sound” that ultimately resolved into a cello cadenza, played very expressively by Michael Dahlenburg. There followed an energetic dance – described by Sdraulig as “blisteringly fast” and by Hiew as “a bit stressful” – that repeatedly built to peaks before fragmenting into another cadenza, also expressively played by violist, Chris Cartlidge. The finale, which referred back to themes from the earlier episodes, brought this short but varied work to an uplifting conclusion.
Sdraulig was in the audience for this performance and joined the ASQ on stage to take an enthusiastic and well-deserved round of applause for this exciting new work.
Violist Chris Cartlidge introduced Korngold’s String Quartet No. 2, noting that Korngold was a child prodigy “at least as good as Mozart”, who by the age of 21 was “the talk of the town”, having composed a ballet, two operas, piano sonatas, various chamber works and the incidental music to a long-running Viennese production of Much Ado about Nothing. His career blossomed during the 1920s, but Korngold is probably better known now for his American compositions than his European works. His second string quartet was written in 1933 (at 36), a year before Korngold moved to the USA.
We are used to hearing a film score as a stand-alone composition (after the film has been made), but in this instance the music was so evocative that it felt as if there were an imaginary “vision-track” alongside it. Korngold’s second string quartet opened with a short motif that sounded to my ears like quickening footsteps and was followed by a succession of similarly atmospheric sound pictures. The next three movements sounded distinctly Viennese. The second movement was a frothy Intermezzo, suggesting chatter in a Viennese café. In the third, a prayer-like melody, marked “con molto sentimento”, gradually emerged from an eerie fog of harmonics and hollow harmonies. The fourth movement was a delicate waltz with pizzicato accompaniment, but in Korngold’s hands the dance took some unexpected turns, resembling, as Cartlidge put it, “a Viennese party that had gone on a bit late” … but nevertheless finished on a high.
The ASQ, with its blended sound and beautifully synchronised phrasing, brought out the ebbs and flows in this atmospheric score to great effect.
While some might have questioned the ASQ’s decision to open the evening with a late Beethoven quartet, that choice was vindicated by the joyous and uplifting finale to Korngold’s quartet. When the players raised their bows triumphantly for the last time, it was truly an exuberant finish to an exhilarating evening of fine music.
Photo credit: Laura Manariti
Sue Kaufmann attended the Australian String Quartet’s performance of “Vanguard” at the Melbourne Recital Centre on Monday July 1, 2024.
