Goldner Variations at Blackheath a hit!

Blackheath Chamber Music Festival | Goldner String Quartet – Beethoven & the Goldner Variations

April 19, 2024, Phillips Hall Blackheath, NSW

After 30 years the Goldner String Quartet are calling it quits, and unbelievably I had never heard them live in person until this, their final year!  It was a bit more than 30 years ago that I recall the first time I saw a classical music concert at the Sydney Opera House. A very young Dene Olding (Goldner’s first violinist) was concertmaster and the program was Vivaldi‘s Four Seasons featuring my string hero at the time Nigel Kennedy. Olding absolutely rocked it! 30 years seems such a long time ago, it makes me feel rather old, but I can assure you that the program presented at the Blackheath Chamber Music Festival was no such thing.

When Olding described the heritage community hall of Blackheath as having a ‘surprisingly wonderful acoustic very sympathetic to string quartets’ he wasn’t joking. From the explosive opening chords through the ethereal second movement of Beethoven’s 1808 Quartet in E-minor Op. 59 no.2, the great ‘Razumovsky Quartets’,  we were enveloped in the warm sound of this truly international quality quartet. Olding, Dimity Hall, Irina Morozova, and Julian Smiles are flawless together. A chirpy minuet and a galloping final movement rounded off the gripping narrative of tension and release.

There was a moment of short repose in a generally dramatic concert program to present a gem from Tchaikovsky,  the Andante Cantabile from his Quartet No. 1. Olding told us Tolstoy was moved to tears when he heard this work.  Evoking his beloved Russia and drawing on folk songs Tchaikovsky presents a graceful melody, passed between the instruments with the breathtaking skill and precision that has come to be expected from this ensemble.

…but this was not what I had come all the way to Blackheath to see, I had heard great things about a work entitled the Goldner Variations. Commissioned in 2020 for the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville for the quartet’s 25th anniversary, it constitutes 25 assorted composers’ interpretations of Beethoven’s famous theme Ode to Joy. It premiered in 2022 and the group thought it fitting in this, their final year, to add another five composers to bring it up to 30 years. These were all current students at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

The work is a fascinating snapshot of Australia’s rich compositional talent. Each composer is given up to 45 seconds, although some took much less, and a handy slide show helped us follow which composer we were up to. I’m glad we had it! The character of each composer was openly on display and, as you would have expected many of the variations carried musical jokes and japes that mostly went way over my head but were immensely enjoyable even to the untrained ear. I heard multiple Beethoven references that weren’t part of the Ode to Joy in Joe Chindamo’s lively dancelike composition which launched the work.

All of the following 29 composers presented very clever and diverse plays on rhythm, melody, pitch, harmony and even language, with fittingly virtuosic writing, at times breathtakingly so. There were of course many references to joy in all its forms – whimsy, bliss, languidness, nature, a night sky, awe, fast furious fun – but also less obvious connections to the theme such as Tim Jayatilaka’s slightly ominous “Owed Joy” and Paul Dean’s deconstructed “Long Red”. Everyone I spoke to had a different favourite but standouts for me were Elena Kats-Chernin’s which set the theme against the theme in an innovative composition, and Jakub Jankowski’s use of not just the string players but also their whistling abilities to change the quartet into a completely different instrument. They all culminated in Carl Vine’s ‘Ode to the Goldners’. Well said Carl, what joy!

The work as a whole underscores the Goldners’ virtuosity and leaves an enduring legacy in the Australian classical music landscape. Be sure to catch the Goldners at one of their many concerts to mark the end of an era during this, their year of celebration and farewells.

The Goldner Variations is presented in association with Musica Viva Australia. The composers are, Joe Chindamo, Audrey Ormella, Maria Grenfell, Clare Strong, John Peterson, Paul Dean, Robert Davidson, Andrew Schultz, Mark Isaacs, Matthew Hindson, Olivia Diamant, Andrew Ford, Hayden Gardiner, Adriel Sukumar, Ross Edwards, Harry Sdraulig, Nigel Westlake, Liza Lim, Iain Grandage, Paul Stanhope, Jakub Jankowski, Brett Dean, Tim Jayatilaka, Elena Kats-Chernin, Elizabeth Younan, Paul Grabowsky, Nicole Murphy, Holly Harrison, Natalie Williams, Carl Vine.

Photo Credit: Keith Saunders