upcoming tours

Goldner String Quartet Innermost Thoughts

Celebrating their 30th and final concert season, Goldner String Quartet will embark on a tour of NSW’s South Coast this September. Sharing their Innermost Thoughts, Goldner String Quartet will perform a thought-provoking program featuring compositions by Mozart, Shostakovich, and Schubert, giving audiences an insight into the intimate thoughts of some of the greatest minds in history.

Earning an international reputation over their 30 years as an ensemble, Goldner String Quartet comprises of all original members and are favourably compared with the best quartets in the world. With performances in the UK, Europe, Asia, and the USA, the ensemble has decided to complete their musical journey back home in Australia.

Making a wonderful and sparkling start to this programme is Mozart’s String Quartet No. 4. Written when Mozart was just 16 whilst he was in Milan for the premiere of his opera Lucio Silla, this work already displays the prodigious talent, mastery of form and the joie de vivre of a young man enjoying remarkable success.

To follow is Shostakovich’s 8th String Quartet which perfectly describes the bleak, gloomy, horrifying period of Stalinist Russia, in addition to the despair and roller-coaster of emotions that the composer himself experienced during this fraught time. Written in just three days in 1960, It is hard not to view this piece as semi-autobiographical. It remains one of the most powerful and profound string quartets by a composer renowned for these qualities. 

Completing the programme is Schubert’s famous String Quartet No. 14, popularly known as ‘Death and the Maiden’. From the opening mighty and forbidding bars to the maniacal music of the last movement there is an air of resignation and inevitability, juxtaposed with music of the most sublime beauty, such as only Schubert can compose.