Many first-time finalists, emerging composers and past winners are in the mix this year.

Director Andy Packer explains how the text of Beethoven’s Heiligenstadt Testament interweaves with the music of the Australian String Quartet’s Beethoven Widmann Beethoven tour.

100 years of Debussy, visits from notable conductors and excerpts of Brett Dean’s Hamlet are among the highlights.

A beautiful concert with a little gem of a piece by Alessandro Scarlatti.

The Quartet’s offerings include a new quartet by James Ledger, as well as works by Dean, Widmann, Mendelssohn and Shostakovich. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

On Migration, Slava Grigoryan and the Australian String Quartet have teamed up to record three recent works written for the unusual combination of guitar and string quartet. The album is named for the first of these, a single-movement work composed in 2003 by American guitarist Ralph Towner, a name that will be more familiar to fans of the German jazz and new music record label ECM than to classical music audiences. Migration languished unrecorded until now, and Towner credits Grigoryan’s enthusiasm and prodigious skill (indeed, in his hands its complex technical demands seem effortless) as central to the success of the work’s complex scalic runs and their integration with elegantly angular string parts. It sits easily alongside Flexible Sky by Austrian guitarist and composer Wolfgang Muthspiel, a dynamic but contemplative work comprising four contrasting movements. Dark and exciting, it features beautiful glissandi, and the notable interplay between violins and guitar reflects Muthspiel’s earlier training on that instrument. Nevertheless, for Flexible Sky, Muthspiel’s approach to instrumentation is democratic, noting that for him the work is “an interactive web of equal voices”. Towner, Muthspiel and Grigoryan regularly perform together as a guitar trio, indicating a degree of intimacy and mutual… Continue reading…

Thrilling Britten and Stanhope leave Dvořák in their wake.

Dvořák could easily have ended up a jobbing musician in some small town but his ambition and genius led him down a different path.

The award-winning artist will recreate Hogarth’s The Enraged Musician to the sounds of the Australian Art Quartet. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

A brave and intriguing programme from Slava and the ASQ.

Hot on the heels of her wedding, the Australian String Quartet cellist Sharon Grigoryan talks about their new album.

The cellist talks about being an invader ahead of his performances at the Margaret River and Dunkeld Festivals.