The Australian String Quartet’s third and final programme of their national touring schedule has played in Sydney and Adelaide earlier this week. This last programme of their 2017 season contains several paradoxes.

Firstly, it bore the title Beginnings.  Huh? In one form or another, the ASQ has been in existence for over 30 years, and it was good to see two original members, violist Keith Crellin and cellist Janis Laurs in the Adelaide audience on Wednesday evening. If not the quartet itself, perhaps this programme signified ‘beginnings’ from the composers: the first of Beethoven’s middle period quartets, the first Bartók and what was perhaps the first work for the genre altogether.

Australian String Quartet – Dale Barltrop, Francesca Hiew, Sharon Grigoryan and Stephen King. Photograph © Jacqui  Way

Of these three works, the one that emerged as the freshest and most intriguing was just over 300 years old.  It was also the shortest, and best performed.

Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) is known for his operas, cantatas and other vocal works. Few would credit him as one of the fathers of the string quartet, a claim usually reserved for Haydn. Yet, sometime before 1715, he appears to...