Musica Viva Australia’s current FutureMakers, the brilliant Partridge Quartet, are sure to wow audiences with this knockout of a program. Joined by guest violinist Jos Jonker and cellist James Morley, the players’ preternatural rapport, formidable musicianship, and gusto for performance will make this an unforgettable experience.
The concert opens with Holly Harrison’s Balderdash, commissioned for the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition and receiving another well-deserved hearing here. A highly theatrical piece, Balderdash explores musical ideas inspired by the electric guitar, including distortion, white noise, and power-chords. Making use of punk-rock rhythms, dissonance, and percussive-based jams, it encourages the traditional string quartet to behave like something of a rock band, interrupting, challenging, and engaging in one-upmanship with each other. Influences as disparate as bluegrass, grunge, prog-rock, metal, and disco coalesce into something utterly unique.
Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major couldn’t be more different. The composer’s final chamber work, it is simply sublime and symphonic in scope, helping to redefine at time of writing what a small string ensemble could accomplish. Impassioned and serene in equal measure, the work constantly shifts in tone, mood, and colour, but never loses its sense of quiet beauty.
