Whilst sitting in Hunter Baillie Memorial Presbyterian Church, you get encapsulated by an amazing ambient atmosphere that allows for the most sedate and gentle of sounds to add to the atmosphere and fill the space.
The wonderful musicians who are part of the Phoenix Collective Quartet – Dan Russell (violin), Pip Thompson (violin), Ella Brinch (viola), Andrew Wilson (cello) – presented ‘Darkness & Light’, a program which is truly relatable to our time as it covers composers’ own isolations and dark times, but with this also came surreal moments of brightness and joy. One of my favourite moments of the afternoon was the second movement of Mozart’s ‘Dissonance’ as the stringed instruments started to sing with colour and harmonise after the dissonant start to the piece. The instruments spoke thousands of words, taking the audience on an emotive musical journey. The musicians were able to produce very textured music which seemed layered with each performer’s very own emotion.
The program started with a world premiere of a contemporary jazz piece written for string quartet. ‘Squint your Eyes’, by Western Australia based composer Mace Francis, set the scene for the afternoon with the breathy timbre that filled the room creating at times both a cold and a warm scene. After hearing the works by Francis and Mozart we got Beethoven’s ‘Quartet in A minor op 132’ which can only be described as transcendent and divine. The piece reminded me of a quote by C. JoyBell C. –
‘The dance between darkness and light will always remain— the stars and the moon will always need the darkness to be seen, the darkness will just not be worth having without the moon and the stars.”
An incredibly rich and dynamic concert that brought out old memories and mixed them with the new ones made by the Phoenix Collective Quartet today.
Thoughts by guest classikON ambassador Johnshu Myers
