City Recital Hall, Sydney

March 18, 2014

Chamber music presenters take note: if you want to put your audience in a good mood before you start, stuff ‘em to the gills with fine food and wine. The Goldner String Quartet are currently engaged in a celebration of Sydney’s sister cities and someone came up with the splendid idea of inviting the audience to sample the cuisine of seven nations as a precursor to hearing some representative music of each of them.

Comfortably replete with duck pancakes (China), sushi (Japan) and some remarkable creations based around the humble Yorkshire pudding (UK), washed down with some fine Huntington Estate wines the Goldners proceeded to entertain us with a whistle stop tour around the world in 80 minutes.

We set off from home with an immaculately performed movement from Peter Sculthorpe’s Jabiru Dreaming String Quartet (No 11) – the jabiru, by the way, is a stork that looks like it’s walking backwards when really it’s moving forwards (!) With cello imitating the didgeridoo, violins representing bird calls and the humble Aussie fly, and an ecstatic melody on viola this was the perfect farewell to country. And no one knows this music as...