Flinders Quartet at Montsalvat – Australia Fair?

Flinders Quartet’s 25th season concludes with Dvořák and works by Australian composers Cheetham Fraillon and Marks.

As Flinders Quartet celebrates their 25th anniversary, they reflect on their identity as an Australian chamber ensemble, curating a concert program of works in which the composers were likely pondering similar questions: who are we, who were we, and who do we want to be?

Flinders Quartet revisit’s Deborah Cheetham Fraillon’s powerful and evocative string quartet, Bungaree, first premiered in 2020. Bungaree is a figure who should be an Australian household name, and thanks to Deborah, he is now part of Flinders Quartet idea of Australia’s, and their own, identity.

Australia Fair? by Bryony Marks asks us to think about very important and fundamental questions about identity. And Dvořák wrote his last chamber work, the A flat string quartet, at the very end of his time in America. Although he was inspired by the lush prairies and woods he was introduced to there, his musical identity was still so connected to his love of the landscape of his homeland, the Czech Republic.