Affinity Quartet: Infinite Affinities

Celebrate the Melbourne ensemble taking the world by storm.

Affinity Quartet represents the next generation of Australia’s chamber music stars, having developed its craft in Europe to critical acclaim. It brings home an inspired approach to music-making, matched by its adventurous spirit as a string quartet for and of today.

About the concert

Following their recent 2nd prize award at the 2023 Mozart International String Quartet Competition Salzburg, Affinity Quartet return to the Primrose Potter Salon for a program featuring two seminal string quartets.

Opening with Haydn’s String Quartet Op.50, No.5 ‘Dream’, this work beautifully showcases the dance between violin, viola and cello. Beethoven’s String Quartet No.11 however, was considered an experiment on compositional techniques of the time with the composer himself rumoured to believe it too extreme for audience consumption, quoted as saying ‘[the piece] is never to be performed in public.’

Sandwiched between these two great and vastly different works is the world premiere of a piece that brings together both the progressive and popular elements of string quartet composition: Tom Misson’s Melbourne Recital Centre and the University of Melbourne commissioned Infinite Affinities.