In this special collaboration between the Australian String Quartet and lifetime member of the Goldner String Quartet, cellist Julian Smiles, contemporary American composer Samuel Adams sets the tone for a moving program. His third quartet is titled Alma, the Spanish word for ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’, and the work explores intimate landscapes of fine texture and intensity. Tchaikovsky’s tender Andante Cantabile speaks to a quieter idea of self. Originally the second movement of his first string quartet, Tchaikovsky confessed that the Andante’s wistful theme – based on a folksong he heard sung by a gardener – had moved him to tears. Such interior musical geographies gesture to Schubert’s final great chamber work, the kaleidoscopic Quintet in C. Completed six weeks before the composer’s death at the age of thirty-one, the Quintet heartrendingly suggests an artist in the very midst of life, seeing clearly all its heady joys, all its darkness.

Australian String Quartet
Dale Barltrop | Violin
Francesca Hiew | Violin
Chris Cartlidge | Viola
Michael Dahlenberg | Cello

Julian Smiles | Cello