Flinders Quartet 2025 Concert Season
Flinders Quartet invites you to experience the wonder of the string quartet in their carefully curated 2025 program as they revel in their glorious art form and the greatest music on earth.
About Flinders Quartet
Flinders Quartet (FQ) is one of Australia’s most loved and respected chamber music ensembles. Formed in 2000, FQ champions the role of the string quartet in 21st-century Australia, blending classical tradition with contemporary innovation. Committed to commissioning and premiering new works, FQ engages established, mid-career, and emerging composers, fostering the development of Australian chamber music. Their performances, recognised for their artistry and emotional depth, captivate audiences across Australia and beyond. Through education, touring, and collaboration, FQ nurtures talent and fosters community engagement, ensuring the enduring relevance of the string quartet.
2025 Montsalvat Program
PAAVALI - Sunday 18 May
Melbourne has been lucky to have extraordinary pianist, Paavali Jumppanen, in our musical community as Artistic Director at ANAM. He joins Flinders Quartet in the opening concert program of their 25th anniversary season for not just one piano quintet but two! Graznya Bacewicz was an accomplished pianist and violin virtuoso whose deep knowledge of the instruments as a performer shows itself in her writing. Her piano quintet is evidence of her immaculate skill and mediates between folkloric impulses and the rigour of classical principles, creating a sound world which is constantly delivering moments of unexpected beauty. Shostakovich was so busy performing his popular new piano quintet on tour with his friends of the Beethoven Quartet following its premiere in November 1940 that he hardly had time to compose for six months. Flinders Quartet sets up this wonderful piano feast with Beethoven’s short but powerful Op. 95 F minor quartet “Serioso”, written at a time of personal despair and the only one he named himself.
Program:
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN String Quartet No. 11 in F minor, Op. 95
GRAZNYA BACEWICZ Piano Quintet No. 1
DIMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57
MUSICAL FRIENDS - Sunday 10 August
Mendelssohn famously said, “It's not that music is too imprecise for words, but too precise…”. Flinders Quartet has always loved this quote and decided to explore this idea by pairing two composers, Melody Eötvös and Rishin Singh, living on opposite sides of the world in a musical letter writing project. The premise being that one composer begins the conversation by writing a short section, which is sent to the other composer who absorbs the music and writes a short section in return. Flinders Quartet are, in effect, the go-between. Natalie Nicolas’ “By the Tide of the Moon” captures the ever-changing moods of the sea and the meditative joy of ocean and sea swimming; while Borodin’s second quartet depicts the love of his wife and their first three glorious months of marriage spent in Heidelberg. The themes of love, letter writing, and communication through music are counterbalanced with the crystalline brilliance of Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue in C minor, which celebrates the sheer joy of music for music’s sake alone.
Program:
NATALIE NICOLAS “By The Tide of the Moon” * WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K.546
MELODY EÖTVÖS / RISHIN SINGH “The Letter Writing Project” **
ALEXANDER BORODIN String Quartet No. 2 in D major
* Commissioned by Andrew Domasevicius-Zilinskas for Flinders Quartet and dedicated to Aida Tuciute, and her beautiful kinship with the ocean
** Commissioned by Flinders Quartet with the support of Kim Williams AM and FQ Syndicate #6
AUSTRALIA FAIR? - Sunday 26 October
As Flinders Quartet celebrates their 25th anniversary, they reflect on their identity as an Australian chamber ensemble, curating a concert program of works in which the composers were likely pondering similar questions: who are we, who were we, and who do we want to be? Flinders Quartet revisit’s Deborah Cheetham Fraillon’s powerful and evocative string quartet, Bungaree, first premiered in 2020. Bungaree is a figure who should be an Australian household name, and thanks to Deborah, he is now part of Flinders Quartet idea of Australia’s, and their own, identity. Australia Fair? by Bryony Marks asks us to think about very important and fundamental questions about identity. And Dvorak wrote his last chamber work, the A flat major string quartet, at the very end of his time in America. Although he was inspired by the lush prairies and woods he was introduced to there, his musical identity was still so connected to his love of the landscape of his homeland, the Czech Republic.
Program:
DEBORAH CHEETHAM FRAILLON “Bungaree” *
BRYONY MARKS “Australia Fair? Volume I: The Australian Dream”
ANTONIN DVORAK String Quartet No, 14 in A flat Op. 105
* Commissioned by Flinders Quartet with support from Andrew Dixon, in memory of Jean and John Dixon