Australian String Quartet. Elder Hall. 9 Jun 2026
The joy of a string quartet is that a good one demonstrates how four string players—two violins, a viola and a cello—can produce something greater than the sum of their individual voices. Interwoven, the title of the Australian String Quartet’s current national tour, presents four works spanning more than two centuries of the genre, each offering something distinctive and rewarding. Together, they reveal the string quartet’s remarkable capacity for reinvention across the ages and its continuing ability to provoke, engage and remain musically relevant.
The programme comprised Australian composer Elizabeth Younan's String Quartet No. 1 (Interwoven), Haydn's String Quartet in A Major, Op. 20 No. 6, Sergei Prokofiev's String Quartet No. 2 in F Major, Op. 92, and finally Clara Schumann's Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, Op. 20, arranged for string quartet by Éric Mouret.
In introducing the Schumann, violinist Francesca Hiew extolled Clara Schumann’s considerable gifts as both composer and performer and explained that the ensemble had chosen the work to conclude the concert. Yet perhaps the programme should have ended with the Prokofiev. Why? Simple. End the concert with a ‘bang’ and send the audience out into the night desperately wanting more from this superb ensemble. The Prokofiev achieves exactly that; the Schumann does not. The Prokofiev excites the entire body to its core, while the Schumann leaves the listener with a contented smile and a warm glow.
The concert began superbly with a spirited performance of Younan’s Interwoven. As the newest work on the programme, written by a living Australian composer, it challenges many assumptions about what a string quartet should sound like. As its title suggests, the work comprises interconnected strands of musical thought that briefly flirt with different motifs, textures and colours before moving on. Atmosphere takes precedence over traditional harmonic progression. It is unmistakably contemporary. Rather than presenting four distinct voices in conversation, the quartet often behaves as a single creature. Interwoven does not reveal its structure readily, but the ASQ played with admirable balance and ensured important musical lines emerged clearly.
Haydn's Op. 20 quartets, composed in 1772, are often known as the “Sun” Quartets and represent a pivotal moment in the history of chamber music. Before Haydn, quartets frequently resembled accompanied violin sonatas; here, genuine dialogue emerges and the four instruments become equal conversational partners. Op. 20 No. 6 opens with unusual seriousness and concludes with a substantial fugue rather than a more conventional lively finale, demonstrating Haydn's growing fascination with contrapuntal writing. In typically Haydnesque fashion, the entire work is developed with remarkable economy, never wasting a note or indulging in excess. That economy presents its own challenge for performers, demanding immaculate intonation and articulation to preserve clarity, particularly in the fugue. The ASQ delivered in spades.
If Haydn's quartet epitomises Classical balance, even with its forward-looking fugue, Prokofiev's Second Quartet bursts with twentieth-century colour, energy and national character. Written in 1941 while the composer was evacuated from Moscow during World War II, the work incorporates folk melodies and musical characteristics of the Kabardinian people among whom Prokofiev found himself living. Although often bold and rhythmically driven, the music is also lyrical and a wonderful demonstration of Prokofiev’s distinctive harmonic language. Its brilliance keeps the audience constantly engaged, with heads bobbing and fingers tapping thighs throughout. The ASQ sustained the work’s intensity and momentum while adroitly navigating its sudden shifts in mood and character. It is surely one of the most distinctive quartets of the twentieth-century repertoire and would have provided a thrilling conclusion to the evening.
Clara Schumann’s Variations was originally a piano work composed in 1853 on a theme by her husband Robert. While Romantic in style and rich in melody, it is also meticulously constructed, balancing emotional expression with formal discipline. In Mouret’s arrangement, the four instruments are used deftly to illuminate different facets of the theme and its transformations. The ASQ allowed the music to become deeply expressive without ever sacrificing balance or refinement.
The ASQ’s playing throughout the concert was skilful, disciplined and unfailingly musical. They consistently drew attention to the inner voices, and Chris Cartlidge’s viola lines were especially illuminating. The program amounted to a history lesson in the evolution of the string quartet, and it was utterly riveting.
Kym Clayton
When: 9 Jun
Where: Elder Hall
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 29 May 2026
Under the assured direction of Chief Conductor Mark Wigglesworth, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s third concert in its flagship Symphony Series was a glorious celebration of German art music. The stage of the Adelaide Town Hall was filled to capacity with nearly one hundred musicians, delivering a blistering performance of Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs with celebrated soprano Helena Dix, alongside Hank de Vlieger’s The Ring: An Orchestral Adventure, an hour-long orchestral synthesis of Richard Wagner’s monumental operatic tetralogy The Ring.
The concert was immense, leaving the audience in an elevated, awe-inspired state—and it could conceivably have been even better.
As is now customary, the ASO opens its Symphony Series concerts with a musical Acknowledgement of Country: Pudnanthi Padninthi II – Wadna, written by Kaurna composer Jamie Goldsmith in collaboration with Kaurna Narungga artist Jack Buckskin and orchestrator Mark Simeon Ferguson. Commissioned by the orchestra earlier this decade, the work unfolds with a steady, earthy rhythmic pulse intended to honour the Adelaide Plains and traditional ceremonial practices before expanding into a broad and sweeping orchestral landscape. Sometimes the ASO performs the work without a conductor, but on this occasion, Wigglesworth took the reins, directing the vast musical forces on stage to produce what was perhaps the most compelling account of the piece yet heard. The thematic material passed deliberately between the string sections, maintaining a clearly defined tempo that underpinned everything else. The result was both striking and deeply affecting. Perhaps the enlarged orchestra affords a conductor greater interpretative freedom with the work. It is not common for audiences to applaud the musical acknowledgement with enthusiasm, but on this occasion they certainly did.
Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs are sublime meditations on the passing of time and the inevitability of death. Such subject matter might easily descend into melancholy, yet Strauss’ settings of texts by the German poets Josef von Eichendorff and Hermann Hesse are anything but sombre. Instead, they radiate beauty, serenity, acceptance, and at times even rapture. They stand among the crowning achievements of the art-song repertoire.
Performing them places extraordinary demands upon the soprano. She must possess profound breath control, faultless legato, and considerable stamina as she navigates Strauss’ opulent orchestration, ensuring that the most delicate pianissimi are meaningfully juxtaposed against climaxes that seem to engulf everything around them. Not only must she be a singer of exceptional accomplishment, but ideally an actress capable of illuminating the meaning behind every phrase. Helena Dix possesses all these qualities, and she appeared commanding yet vulnerable in her richly appointed emerald-green and black gown.
Dix was only one of almost one hundred accomplished musicians on stage, yet all eyes were on her. At times, her own gaze seemed fixed solely upon Concertmaster Kate Suthers as she delivered a luminous account of the long, soaring violin solo in the third song, Beim Schlafengehen (Upon Going to Sleep). Two classy women, seemingly alone within a crowd, sharing a sublime musical moment.
Beim Schlafengehen proved the most successful of the set, as the assembled might of the orchestra was occasionally allowed to overwhelm the soprano to such an extent that she could barely be heard. One audience member remarked to me afterwards that Helena Dix had “more in the tank”, and it is difficult not to agree. It was a pity that she either did not, or was not permitted to, fully unleash the splendour of her instrument. Having said that, the dynamic trajectory she shaped across the four songs was thoughtful and carefully judged; the orchestra was simply too loud.
As the final note of the fourth song, Im Abendrot (At Sunset), settled and gently dissolved into silence, one could almost hear a pin drop in the vast auditorium of the Adelaide Town Hall. Ten full seconds passed in complete stillness. Then came thunderous applause for a sublime soprano. Helena Dix was entirely at home on the stage.
There are no such complaints with the Wagner/de Vlieger. Much of Wagner’s music is immense in every sense of the word and requires vast musical resources if it is to achieve its full effect. This is certainly true of The Ring, and de Vlieger’s arrangement (which is purely instrumental and involves no singing) gathers key moments from each of the four operas in a manner that thoroughly disproves the famous quip that “Wagner has beautiful moments, but awful quarters of an hour!” The remark, frequently attributed to the Italian composer Rossini, neatly captures the divide between Wagner’s admirers and detractors: the former hear luxuriant orchestration and revolutionary harmonic language, while the latter hear an assault on patience and stamina.
Wherever one sits on that continuum of appreciation, Wagner’s long, meditative stretches are precisely what make the climactic moments feel so overwhelmingly exhilarating. This is exactly the effect Wigglesworth achieved with the ASO. Together they settled upon tempi that perfectly suited both the scale of the orchestra and the acoustic of the Town Hall. Wagner aficionados absorbed every moment and marvelled at what Wigglesworth and the ASO were accomplishing on stage. Those less familiar with Wagner responded with equal delight when recognisable passages such as the Ride of the Valkyries emerged from the orchestral texture.
Seventy minutes later—though it felt considerably less—the final notes of the concluding excerpt from Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene rang out, and once again an eerie silence settled over the auditorium. The large audience appeared to absorb the immensity and gravity of what it had just heard and experienced. Then, just as it had at the end of the first half, the hall erupted into heartfelt, generous, and sustained applause in appreciation of a magnificent programme.
Mark Wigglesworth’s beaming smile said it all. When he received the traditional congratulatory floral arrangement, he immediately sought out principal horn player Adrian Uren and presented it to him in recognition of his gorgeous off-stage horn solo in Movement VIII (Siegfried’s Heldentat). The gesture delighted both the audience and his fellow musicians, providing a fittingly warm conclusion to a remarkable evening of music-making.
Kym Clayton
When: 29 to 30 May
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
Esmond Choi. Derek Pascoe. Nexus Arts. 1 May 2026
For the second and final concert in Adelaide pianist Esmond Choi’s The Adventurous Project: Graphic Scores of Austin Engelhardt, Choi performed at the piano together with renowned saxophonist and saxophone teacher Derek Pascoe. This was a meeting of minds and musical hearts that produced enchanting results. (This review should be read together with Kym Clayton’s review of concert 1, here)
Choi’s printed program detailed Engelhardt’s instructions on the use of his Book 1, which comprises 26 graphic scores “created to inspire creative thought for improvisors”. For example, “pages may be viewed in any orientation and in any order”; where only a few pages are to be performed, “care should be taken to choose pages that feel as though they contrast well with each other”; and, “a dialogue among the players is an essential part of the rehearsal and execution…”. In their introductory remarks, Choi and Pascoe indicated that they had engaged in extensive such dialogue.
Choi and Pascoe performed from five of Engelhardt’s scores over a total of 45 minutes. For the benefit of the audience, the scores were projected onto a screen adjacent to the performers. Each score is a simple, fixed image—a few gestural strokes or splashes of paint, or a handprint—that serves as a trigger to the performers’ imaginations, possibly suggesting a sonic palette.
Classically trained Choi has illuminated the Adelaide music scene with his performances of contemporary solo piano music and especially the music of George Crumb, but he has had comparatively little experience with improvisation.
Pascoe, who has wide experience in jazz, experimental, and popular music, is adept at improvisation and, for example, teamed with jazz pianist Chris Martin to create the 18 CD box set of hour-long improvisations entitled Here Comes Everything (2025).
Responding to the first graphic score, Choi began by using a percussionist’s mallet to tap the piano’s strings while Pascoe played short phrases. Choi variously plucked or strummed the piano’s strings and employed a range of extended piano techniques typical of contemporary piano repertoire, exploring all the piano’s sonic possibilities, and he also played short phrases, using the piano both as a melodic and a percussive instrument.
Pascoe’s melodic passages initially anchored the music, framing its overall direction and pace, and he added dramatic flourishes. As the performance developed, Pascoe and Choi seemed to work instinctively in tandem, each stimulating a response in the other.
The graphic score is merely a trigger, a starting point. Gestural, arhythmic and often chromatic, the music rises and falls in volume and intensity. Choi’s playing is inventive and pianistic and his experience as a composer of piano music shows through. Some fragmentary piano passages recalled the character of Pierre Boulez’s Three Piano Sonatas (1957). One would not have guessed that Choi was so new to improvisation. At one point, Pascoe played the opening phrase from God Save the King, adding a little humour to the mix.
Their performance obliquely recalls the music of the legendary improvisers, The Necks, and Free Jazz artists such as Ornette Coleman and Sun Ra’s Arkestra, but this was not jazz and Choi and Pascoe did not adhere to any perceptible rhythmic pattern. In the absence of structure and thematic material, the art is in spontaneous musical invention and phrasing, which emerged fluidly and coherently, and they developed a most absorbing orchestration.
The listening experience is quite unique, as one listens much more deeply, becoming acutely aware of the sounds, resonances, textures, and the shaping of the music as it emerges. It was fascinating throughout.
The combination of Choi and Pascoe, with their diverse experiences and musical sensibilities, made for an engrossing musical cocktail. Their combined sound is thoroughly engaging and original, and The Adventurous Project has provided a firm foundation for future exploratory musical adventures.
Chris Reid
When: 1 May 2026
Where: Nexus Arts
Bookings: Closed
Esmond Choi. Maria Zhdanovich. Nexus Arts. 24 Apr 2026
Austin Engelhardt is not easily categorised. A contemporary composer, improviser, and visual artist who only began reading music at 20, he arrived at composition with an adult’s conceptual liberation rather than the indoctrinated habits from formal musical training commencing in childhood. That liberation is audible in his work: his graphic scores resist conventional hierarchy—melody, harmony, accompaniment—in favour of gesture, density, and spatial thinking. Yet Engelhardt is not a naïve musical outsider—he is seriously educated and is currently working towards a Doctor of Musical Arts at the University of South Carolina, studying with composer David Kirkland Garner (who has been commissioned by the Kronos Quartet and other significant ensembles)
Esmond Choi is a seriously fine Elder Conservatorium trained pianist and emerging composer in his own right, and in his introductory remarks from the stage, he noted that he met Engelhardt at a social gathering whilst recently on study in Boston, USA. Choi and Engelhardt quickly recognised a shared curiosity and agreed to collaborate, and tonight’s concert of Book 1 of Engelhardt’s Graphic Scores is the result. It is part of Choi’s Adventurous Project!
Joining Choi on stage is flutist and sonic artist Maria Zhdanovich, who is currently studying at the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) and, like Choi, is adept at bridging Western art music and experimental practice.
So, what’s a graphic score? Simply put, it replaces traditional notation with visual symbols—lines, shapes, textures—that function less as instructions and more as provocations. From a technical standpoint, this shifts the performer’s role from interpreter to co-composer: decisions about pitch, tempo, articulation, and timbral development are made in real time. The result is music that is inherently non-repeatable. Even the same performers, revisiting the same image, would generate entirely different outcomes. This is not variation—it is re-creation.
Choi, better known for his refined pianism, performs here on synthesiser, constructing evolving sound masses rather than discrete melodic lines. His approach often avoids tonal centres, and instead favours sustained drones, microtonal inflections, and subtle spectral shifts. Zhdanovich responds with an extended flute technique palette: breath tones, multiphonics, and pitch bending. Between them there is a dynamic interplay between acoustic and electronic spectra.
The visual component is inseparable from the musical one. Against stark white lighting, the performers’ silhouettes are projected alongside Engelhardt’s black-and-white images. The aesthetic evokes an extreme chiaroscuro, reinforcing the binary tension between structure and freedom. One early image—a swirling form intersecting perpendicular staves—suggests a collision between traditional linear notation and gestural flow. The staffs are a nod to musical formalism, but the swirl draws you into an unfamiliar sonic world Musically, this manifests as a low, centreless synth drone over which the flute traces slowly morphing contours.
Zhdanovich then presses a button on the nearby computer and a new image appears—a “blob” on a staff, dripping stalactite-like forms, and the sonic language thickens in response. Texture becomes all important, and strained glissandi, unstable harmonics, and shifting noise components create a sense of suspended time. Rhythm, in the conventional sense, dissolves and time becomes meaningless.
A striking moment occurs with the projection of the image of a raised human hand. Unlike the abstract forms preceding it, this image introduces an unmistakable human element. The performers respond with a fleeting gravitation toward tonality before the music recedes again into ambiguity. It is a reminder that even within experimental frameworks, tonal reference remains a powerful expressive tool when used sparingly. Provocatively, the image appears on the front page of the printed concert program: it almost demands the audience to stop, and abandon any preconceptions and expectations.
For the audience—an eclectic mix spanning seasoned classical listeners to those more attuned to contemporary and “lighter” genres—the experience is deeply immersive. One might describe it, as an audience member did, as a “sophisticated jam session,” but that risks underselling the level of listening and responsiveness, and structural awareness required.
This is improvisation informed by compositional thinking at every moment.
Crucially, the appeal of this performance cuts across musical boundaries. Those accustomed to classical concert traditions will recognise the discipline, control, and the musical awareness of Choi and Zhdanovich. Listeners drawn to more modern or experimental sounds will find immediacy, unpredictability, and a visceral engagement with sound itself. The absence of fixed form becomes an invitation rather than a barrier.
At the close, Choi remarked that “we classical musicians should do this more often.” Judging by the audience’s response, that sentiment resonated widely. Performances like this challenge our listening habits while remaining grounded in musicianship of the highest order.
Choi returns with Book 2 on 1 May, again at Nexus Arts, this time at the piano and joined by saxophonist Derek Pascoe. If Book 1 is any indication, it will not simply be another concert, but another unrepeatable event—music that exists only in the moment of its making, never to be heard in quite the same way again.
Tickets can be purchased online from the Recitals Australia website, or at the door, but numbers are limited. Book 2 will be another unique experience.
Kym Clayton
When: 24 April and 1 May
Where: Nexus Arts
Bookings: esmondchoi.com
Renowned champion of contemporary music, acclaimed pianist and composer, and the artistic director of Soundstream New Music, Gabriella Smart, is releasing a CD featuring the unique and wondrous instrument, the Electric Cristal.
The CD is entitled Parasymbiosis and it comprises eight tracks, Parasymbiosis I – VIII, which were recorded live at the Music Meeting Festival, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, in May 2024. The recording was a finalist in the APRA AMCOS work of the year in the electroacoustic sound art category in 2025.
The term parasymbiosis refers to the interdependent coexistence of two organisms, but Smart uses the term to refer more broadly to the interconnectedness of all life. In her notes accompanying the CD, she makes an impassioned plea for the recognition of this interrelationship, and says,
“Through Parasymbiosis I imagined sounds of the inherent connection between the earth and the universe. Contemporary society has rendered invisible the heritage of the night sky and what it teaches us. The wonder and awe it inspires, in its pure, unadulterated form untouched by light pollution and modern satellite activity, has always informed non-human and human life cycles and human culture… We have forgotten that the dark sky and the earth reflect each other — they are, as a metaphor, parasymbiotic.”
The Electric Cristal was devised specifically for Smart by Adelaide composer and musician, Wiradjuri man Dylan Crismani, and it was designed to be easily disassembled and carried in a suitcase so she could travel with it.
The Electric Cristal (photo supplied)
It comprises a set of interchangeable, microtonally-tuned glass rods which the performer strokes with moistened fingers. It can also be bowed with a violin bow, and other objects can be used to stimulate the glass rods. Metal plates affixed to the frame resonate with the vibrations produced by the rods.
The vibrations of the glass rods are also picked up by a series of contact microphones for relay either directly to an amplifier or routed through electronic devices to enable the performer to use the Electric Cristal’s vibrations and resonances as sonic raw material for further modification and elaboration.
The Electric Cristal’s unique sound arises from the performer’s careful control of finger pressure, the slipperiness of the rods and the speed at which the rods are stroked. The performer can generate a wide range of sound from low droning to high-pitched humming and squealing. The instrument is ideally suited to the generation of single or multiple long-duration tones or drones which can be shaped into a complex orchestration with textural shifts and changes in dynamics and key registers.
Smart has performed solo with the Electric Cristal and frequently with other collaborators in Australia and overseas. For the 2024 Parasymbiosis performance, Smart was joined by Polish-born French musician and composer Kasper Toeplitz on bass and electronics, and Didier Casamitjana on percussion and electronics. Toeplitz uses a specially designed electric bass to generate long, resonant tones that variously complement and contrast the sounds made by the Electric Cristal.
The overall effect is to immerse the listener in an evocative, arhythmic, slowly-evolving soundscape that stimulates the listener’s imagination and visualisation. The first track, Parasymbiosis I, opens quietly but portentously, as if signalling the irresistible flow of cosmic forces. In some tracks, such as Parasymbiosis V, the intensity and complexity of the sound increase to an overwhelming level, creating a visceral impact on the listener.
In the longest track, Parasymbiosis VII, a succession of bass drumbeats suggests earth-bound thunder; deep rumbling emerges periodically to evoke tectonic shifts in the earth’s surface; high-pitched twittering sounds could suggest twinkling starlight, and occasional booming sounds could refer to solar eruptions. At times the sound reduces to a chattering whisper and then builds again to a crescendo. The eight densely orchestrated tracks proceed without any breaks in between, generating all kinds of imagery in the listener’s mind.
Smart’s adroit use of the Electric Cristal represents a significant development musically, and the use of bass guitar and percussion greatly extends the sonic and compositional possibilities of such music.
Chris Reid
The CD will be available on Bandcamp from 1 May 2026 and can be pre-ordered before then: bandcamp.com/album/parasymbiosis
More Info: gabriellasmart.com/parasymbiosis