Fresh from their Sydney Opera House debut, Phoenix Collective Quartet joins forces with star pianist Zen Zeng to present a program exploring inner worlds mapped and shared through sound. The centrepiece of the program is Schumann’s epic piano quintet, composed with his beloved wife Clara in mind. Written at a creative high point in Schumann’s life, the work also contains hints of his internal mental struggle.

The journey into emotional interior worlds continues with Shostakovich’s intensely personal String Quartet no 8; the bleak compositional landscape littered with the composer’s incantatory musical graffiti tag of D-S-C-H hints at his troubled psyche. Rockstar Italian cellist Giovanni Sollima’s whimsical tribute to an imagined folk style, the light-hearted, Sonnets et Rondeaux will introduce this dynamic program of contrasts.