Now in its fourth year, the Blackheath Chamber Music Festival is back, bigger and better than ever – and without a cent of arts funding from the government.

Thank goodness for Bendigo Bank, which has decided to sponsor this vital event in the Blue Mountains’ arts calendar.

The first day of the festival got underway with Louise Johnson’s incredibly entertaining and informative The Harp’s Journey, before coming to a close with the Goldner String Quartet’s 30th-anniversary concert, heralding its farewell.

Both performances are reviewed separately below.

Louise Johnson at the Blackheath Chamber Music Festival 2024. Photo © Keith Saunders

Louise Johnson: The Harp’s Journey ★★★★

Some musicians have the gift of the gab, and Louise Johnson has it in spades. Watching the former Sydney Symphony Orchestra Principal Harpist take the audience on a musical journey spanning more than three millennia, it’s hard not to wish you were back at school with Johnson as your music teacher.

Not only does she know how to impart her encyclopaedic knowledge of the harp’s history, she’s funny too. Very, very funny.

Taking to a harp with a selection of kitchen utensils and Blu Tack, Johnson gives an improvised demonstration of the more bizarre things she was asked to do during her 39-year career with the SSO. “It’s probably why I left,” she quips, and the audience bursts into eager laughter.

The instrument in question – a 20th-century harp – is one of ten lined up on stage, beginning with the ancient harp on which Johnson plays Michael Levy’s arrangement of Hurrian Hymn No. 6. Discovered on a clay tablet during a Syrian dig in the 1950s, it is the oldest known melody and dates back to 1400BC.

Johnson works her way through all 10 harps, adjusting her touch to demonstrate the tonal difference each one offers.

She also shares a different anecdote about each instrument’s origins and the innovations it ushered in, from the dawn of chromatism with the invention of the Spanish double-action and the Italian triple harps, to the introduction of pedals and today’s electric harp.

Louise Johnson at the Blackheath Chamber Music Festival 2024. Photo © Keith Saunders

Along the way, Johnson plays some Blondel and Richard the Lionheart on the Bray harp (“It’s an acquired taste,” she says); we learn about Elizabeth I’s decision to punish the Irish by having Cromwell kill all the harpists and burn their music; we hear from Turlough O’Carolan who rediscovered and notated some of those lost works; and we get to enjoy the jazz stylings of Mimi Allen and Dorothy Ashby.

We also visit Paraguay for a spirited rendition of Alfredo Ortiz’s Nocha de Fiesta with an “¡Olé!” from Johnson before she brings the house down during a live, multi-tracked performance of Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy.

There are virtuosic moments too, including the opener, La Source, by Zabel, which inspired Johnson to take up the harp, and the Andante Allegro from Handel’s Concerto in B-flat, originally written as filler between the movements of the composer’s oratorio, Alexander’s Feast.

The epitome of elegance and distinction when seen on the podium surrounded by fellow musicians, the harp is revealed to be the swan of the musical world, fiercely paddling (or pedalling in this case) beneath the surface.

The grace with which Johnson plucks at the strings belies her frenzied footwork below and makes this tour de force an absolute must-see.

The Goldner String Quartet at the Blackheath Chamber Music Festival 2024. Photo © Keith Saunders

Goldner String Quartet: Beethoven and the Goldner Variations ★★★★★

Day One of the festival concludes with the first of two appearances by the Goldner String Quartet, which will also close the festival on Sunday with the Orava Quartet.

This concert, celebrating the Goldners’ 30th anniversary is a bittersweet affair as it also marks the quartet’s farewell before it disbands at the end of the year.

There isn’t much that hasn’t already been written about the Goldners; their musicianship is renowned the world over and, frankly, they will be sorely missed.

The members of the quartet – violinists Dene Olding and Dimity Hall, violist Irina Morozova and cellist Julian Smiles – boast a stunning complementarity that, like the combination of tannins in red wine and dark chocolate, triggers a heightening of the senses.

Smiles’ burnished cello underpins the nimble playing of Olding and Hall, while Morozova switches effortlessly between rich hues and an ethereal breathiness.

Their artistry is on full display during the opening Quartet in E minor by Beethoven – one of the three Razumovsky quartets which incorporate a Russian folk song. In this case, Glory to the Sun.

Introducing the work, Olding explains that there is much conjecture about the meaning of the two opening chords. Many believe they represent the bombs falling during the Napoleonic Wars, but Olding points out there are plenty of other instruments better suited to that. Neverthless, in the Goldners’ capable hands, the Quartet gets underway with an almighty jolt.

The second movement, described in the program notes as “lush”, succeeds in carrying the audience far, far away to a heavenly realm. Beethoven indicated that it should be played with great feeling, and the Goldners give it their all.

We are brought back to reality with the increasing urgency of the third and fourth movements. As tension builds, the opposing upper and lower strings vie for dominance until Olding finally leads the quartet to a thrilling finale that leaves the audience ecstatic.

And that’s just the first half.

The Goldner String Quartet at the Blackheath Chamber Music Festival 2024. Photo © Keith Saunders

What follows is one of the most masterful renditions of the Andante Cantabile from Tchaikovsky’s Quartet No. 1.

It is built around two folk songs – one overheard by Tchaikovsky while a gardener sang on his sister’s property in Ukraine, the other the Song of the Volga Boatman.

When Helen Keller felt the vibrations of the Zoellner Quartet performing the Andante Cantabile, she said she felt the sea breeze on her face. She could have been describing the effect of the Goldners’ performance too.

And it’s pure Tchaikovsky, Olding’s final passage echoing the violin solo during the White Swan pas de deux in Swan Lake.

Tchaikovsky may have put the notes on the page, but the Goldners bring him and his nationalism to life. If Tolstoy cried when he first heard it, one can only imagine the flood of tears that would have greeted this performance.

The concert ends with the Goldner Variations on Beethoven’s theme, Ode to Joy. A series of miniatures, they were originally commissioned for the Goldners’ 25th anniversary and composed by 25 different Australian composers.

The world premiere was delayed by the pandemic, and the Goldners gave their first performance of the variations during the 2022 Australian Festival of Chamber Music.

To mark the Goldners’ 30th anniversary, five new variations have been added by students from the Sydney Conservatorium.

Each new miniature seamlessly fits in with the others, Audrey Ormella’s witty and twangy Ode to Inertia now preempts the plucking originally introduced in Maria Grenfell’s Ode to Whimsy which now follows.

Midway through, Oliva Diamant’s Ode to Joyous Outbursts begins a sequence of alternating miniatures that, one by one, are exuberant or herald a threat and possible end to happiness.

Here we find Hayden Gardiner’s new Ode to Open Strings and the compositions of his peers Adriel Sukamar and Tim Jayatilaka, bookended by original variations from Ross Edwards, Brett Dean and Elena Kats-Chernin.

Olding, Hall, Morozova and Smiles manoeuver from one to the next like chameleons, conquering the prevalence of plucked strings evident in the new additions, while Sukamar’s miniature truly embraces the Goldners’ tawny colouring.

Introducing the Goldner Variations, Olding says we’ll be glad they’re not turning 40. Hardly.

Yes, it’s a party piece, but it’s a testament to the Goldners’ extraordinary musicianship, and to Australia’s wealth of composing talent.

The Blackheath Chamber Music Festival is being held in the Phillips Hall, Blackheath, NSW, until 21 April.