By Helen Musa

The Australian String Quartet is busy working up a program that combines the very new, the very old, some exciting Russian virtuosity and a dash of the romantic through the works of Elizabeth Younan, Joseph Haydn, Sergei Prokofiev and Clara Schumann.

When I catch up with first violinist of the eminent Adelaide-based quartet, Dale Bartrop, I find that the musicians are preparing for their concert Interwoven, which they will bring to Canberra’s Gandel Hall as part of a nationwide tour.

Bartrop describes the quartet to me as an “unprecedented model of self-presentation”, with all four musicians working as equal co-directors. 

“The four of us make all of our decisions together as a team and we try to present accessible programs. Every program is an evolution. We often come to our decisions, many weeks of juggling, trial and error playing with different combinations.”

At the centre of the coming program, designed as a tapestry of voices across centuries, is String Quartet No. 1, Interwoven, by Australian composer Elizabeth Younan, which opens the concert.

The work also gives its name to the program. It draws together different musical traditions and reflects Younan’s understanding of the string quartet as a form in which all four voices carry equal weight. 

It’s not a world premiere. Younan composed part of it in 2016 when she was an undergraduate at the Sydney Conservatorium, completing it in 2019 and seeing the Goldner String Quartet play the premiere of the first movement.

But then the ASQ members got hold of a video showing a young ensemble at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia playing the work and, as Bartrop puts it: “We were bowled over by a really wonderful piece of music… we said, let’s program it in.” 

He’s pretty sure it’s never been recorded, but they will put that right this year.

Bartrop believes the young composer’s sympathy for string instruments is second to none, saying: “She understands all the voices equally in a similar vein to Bartók and Shostakovich when they wrote their string quartets.”

Younan, 32, and now studying at the Juilliard School in New York, is recognised as one of Australia’s rising composers. Her music has been performed internationally, including her violin solo… your heart dreams of spring, featured on Jennifer Koh’s 2021 Grammy Award-winning album Alone Together. She has also written for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and for the podcast Lost Women of Science.

It made sense to follow with Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in A Major, Op. 20 No. 6. 

Bartrop says that the Op. 20 quartets, by Joseph Haydn, “father of the string quartet”, are different from the old tradition where the first violin provided the melodies and the others gave harmonic support.

The shift in style continues with Russian giant Sergei Prokofiev’s String Quartet No. 2 in F major, Op. 92. 

Despite Prokofiev’s popularity, his string quartets are not often heard in live performance so, Bartrop says: “This is an opportunity to perform work by Prokofiev which is full of folk music and rhythmic energy and beating harmonies with at times a really rustic aspect to it – very satisfying to play.” 

Prokofiev would have approved. Listening to it in Moscow just after a Nazi air raid in 1942, he pronounced it “an extremely turbulent success”.

With all that Russian fire, the ASQ quadrumvirate realised there was nothing romantic in the program, so they chose an arrangement by Éric Mouret of Clara Schumann’s Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann. 

Composed in 1853 as a 43rd birthday gift for her husband, the work provides what Bartrop describes as an opportunity “to reflect and to be soothed by the touch of such a tender, intimate musical sense of intimacy and reflection.”

“Like dessert. Something to leave a sweet taste in the mouth.”

Interwoven, The Australian String Quartet, Gandel Hall, NGA, May 17.