Orava Quartet at Blackheath Chamber Music Festival 2024 (NSW):
- “The Orava are the shape of the future of string quartets in this country. We are in good hands.”
– Australian Stage, April 2024 (live review, Phillips Hall, Blue Mountains, NSW) - “It was a privilege to be there. … for the Festival’s conclusion the experience and sophistication of the Goldners joined with the verve and passion of the Oravas to create a string Octet… I have never heard the [Mendelssohn Octet for Strings] performed with such energy. Gone was the gossamer lightness often associated with this work. Instead there was all the astounding energy of the adolescent Mendelssohn, bursting out of every page. … the privilege was to have been here at Blackheath when [the Goldner Quartet] handed over their mantle, in person, to the Orava Quartet, in such a supervibrant performance.”
– Australian Stage, April 2024 (live review, Phillips Hall, Blue Mountains, NSW)
Orava Quartet at Coriole Music Festival 2024 (South Australia):
- “Orava Quartet were breathtaking in their own pieces. Erwin Schulhoff’s String Quartet No. 1 witnessed the tightest and cohesively most impressive quartet playing ever seen at Coriole …
… yet more dazzling playing from Orava Quartet in Wojciech Kilar’s “Orawa”, a piece inspired by traditional Polish folk fiddling. Just as this young group from Queensland draws its name from the Orawa region of southern Poland on account of their family’s ancestry, so does this brilliant piece. One simply couldn’t get enough of their playing. Orava possess an artistic drive and a level of technical sheen that propels quartet playing to new heights.Two of the most joyous experiences this year were Samuel Dundas partnering with Orava Quartet in Barber’s startlingly impassioned art-song “Dover Beach”, and all the string players re-joining in the last work, Olli Mustonen’s Nonet No. 2. Here was warmth, beauty and musicianship of the highest level.”
– InReview, May 2024 (live review, Coriole Estate Vineyard, McClaren Vale, SA) - “a special unannounced surprise with the late Wojciech Kilar’s suite, Orava, a musical evocation of a rural area of Poland. Exciting, inciting, highly rhythmic stuff! … the masterful Orava Quartet, who took us to the vast garden world of the 1920s and [Erwin Schulhoff’s] experimentation in jazz, timbre and atonalism. This received a well-deserved standing ovation”
– Limelight, May 2024 (live review, Coriole Estate Vineyard, McClaren Vale, SA)
Coming up next: Orava Quartet perform with William Barton for Gold Coast Chamber Orchestra, and give the world premiere at Melbourne Recital Centre of a new string quartet by acclaimed composer Paul Dean (tickets here), perform at Tyalgum Festival (NSW), at Australian Youth Orchestra’s Chamber Music intensive, and more.
Keep up to date with the Orava Quartet’s news at facebook.com/OravaQuartetOfficial