The 50th anniversary of the Takács Quartet coincides with the 80th anniversary of Musica Viva Australia.

With Takács’ own relocation from Cold War Hungary to the United States in the 1980s, what better tribute to this long partnership than a new commission by Berlin-based Australian composer Cathy Milliken addressing the experience of emigration and cultural dislocation?  

Takács Quartet with Angie Milliken. Photo © Cameron Jamieson

Drawn from eight poems by twice-exiled playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht, Milliken’s Sonnet of an Emigrant was prepared for the Takács Quartet and narrator, Australian actress (and Cathy’s sister) Angie Milliken.

Performed as the second work of the program, the music forms around the narrator reciting Brecht’s text in English and German against a largely free-form soundscape, where the players respond to the subjects and emotions in the poetry.  

Brecht fled the Nazis for the USA during World War II but then felt forced to leave under the shadow of McCarthyism in 1948, settling back in what was by then East Berlin. Perhaps coincidentally, Cathy Milliken’s...