Goldner String Quartet

string quartet

Launched in 1995, the Goldner String Quartet has performed regularly together since 1991 as the four string players from the highly acclaimed Australia Ensemble (resident at the University of New South Wales). The Quartet is named after Richard Goldner, renowned pedagogue, inventor, and founder of the original Musica Viva Australia. The players are all well known to Australian and international audiences through solo performances and recordings and have all occupied principal positions in organisations such as the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Australian Chamber Orchestra. The Quartet regularly appears at major music festivals around Australia in addition to national tours for Musica Viva. The members of the quartet have been a mainstay of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville since 1993. In March 2000, the Quartet performed a major retrospective of 20th Century string quartets at the Adelaide Festival and more recently has collaborated with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in their festivals celebrating the works of Beethoven and Shostakovich and the Shock of the New concert.

In 1997 the Goldner String Quartet made its debut at the Wigmore Hall in London, and have appeared there regularly since as well as at the UK festivals of Cheltenham, Newbury and Brighton and at the ‘Saison musicale d’ete de Sceaux’ in France. In October 2001 the Quartet made its American debut with concerts at the prestigious 92nd St Y in New York and in Washington DC, has undertaken three extensive tours of New Zealand, most recently in 2006, and also toured to Korea that year.

The Quartet performed its first complete Beethoven Cycle for Musica Viva in 2004, which ABC Classics recorded live for release in the near future. The Quartet toured nationally for Musica Viva in 2005 with didgeridoo artist William Barton, in a highly acclaimed program entitled Earth Cry. Also in 2005, the Quartet undertook two extensive and acclaimed tours of the UK and Europe, being listed as ‘one of the classical highlights of the week’ in The Guardian newspaper and performing at a number of European summer music festivals including the renowned chamber music festival of Kuhmo, Finland. The Quartet returned to the UK and Italy in February this year, receiving unanimous audience and critical acclaim.