Review: BRODSKY QUARTET WITH WILLIAM BARTON at Elder Hall

Review by Lisa Lanzi

It would be rare to enter Adelaide’s Elder Hall and encounter any production that isn’t world class and this standalone Adelaide Festival performance certainly upheld that tradition, with standing ovation to seal the deal.  William Barton and the Brodsky Quartet are touring Australia and performing at Melbourne Recital Centre, Queensland Performing Art Centre, Sydney's ACO On The Pier and now the Adelaide Festival concert which will be broadcast by the ABC on 20 March at 7pm.

William Barton, a Kalkadunga man from Mt Isa in north-west Queensland, is a composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and master artist of the yidaki (also known as didgeridoo or yigi yigi, depending on cultural location).  As well as his own celebrated international career, Barton has a long association with the Brodsky Quartet and toured with them to regional New Zealand and the Auckland Arts Festival in May 2024.  His utter dedication to music and sound is simply breathtaking and it was an honour to experience the magic in Adelaide.

The Brodsky Quartet is peopled by Krysia Osostowicz (violin), Ian Belton (violin), Paul Cassidy (viola) and Jacqueline Thomas (cello).  Since their formation in 1972 the Quartet have performed over 3,500 concerts on major stages across the world and released more than 70 recordings.  They are celebrating fifty-four years of existence in 2026 and The British Council is supporting this Brodsky/Barton collaboration.  The players have been celebrated for their "perfect blending" emotional depth of playing, and their "vibrant, enquiring mindset" (Limelight Magazine).  From Shostakovich to collaborations with Elvis Costello, Katie Noonan, and Björk, they are a group that pursues interesting challenges.

The evening began with a spare and eerie soundscape from William Barton which followed the beautiful Welcome to Country from Jamie Goldsmith and his own yidaki playing.  The Brodsky Quartet played several works alone: Purcell’s Fantasia in D minor, the four movements of Janáček’s String Quartet No 1 - Kreutzer Sonata, Stravinsky’s Danse from Three Pieces for String Quartet, and Salina Fisher’s Tōrino – echoes on pūtōrino improvisations by Rob Thorne, plus the traditional Irish folk song She Moves Through The Fair – sung exquisitely by violist Paul Cassidy then joined by the four instruments.

Salina Fisher’s fascinating contemporary piece Tōrino is inspired by the pūtōrino, a Māori wind instrument capable of producing a wide variety of tones as varied as a trumpet or a flute.  Each of the quartet instruments played a variety of tonal lines, some mournful, and some leaning more toward a woodwind utterance while other lines of melody brought to mind New Zealand bird life.

It was the pieces where Barton joined the Quartet that held my interest the most.  String Quartet No 7: Eden Ablaze from Australian composer Andrew Ford was entrancing and emotional, a memorial and requiem to the catastrophic 2019/20 fires that swept across Eastern Australia.  The work was commissioned for the Brodsky Quartet and William Barton by Julian Burnside AO QC; composed in January and February 2020, the work didn’t premiere until 2023 after unavoidable Covid-caused delays.  Eden Ablaze allows imagination to soar as the instruments evoke dramatic, sound-induced images of a blasted landscape or the plaintive cry of wildlife, or the escape of those fleeing, while Barton’s yidaki suggests wind sloughing through the remains, or the background drone of desolation – for instance, those distressing images of people and animals that circulated as attempts were made to shelter in the ocean as a fire front approached the shore near Eden in NSW.

Robert Davidson’s Minjerribah referencing Queensland’s North Stradbroke Island was another collaboration during the performance as was Peter Sculthorpe’s String Quartet No.11, Jabiru Dreaming, a work inspired by the rock formations of Kakadu National Park.  I sat entranced when Kronos Quartet played the Sculthorpe piece (commissioned by Musica Viva Australia in 1990) at Adelaide Town Hall, decades ago, and was delighted to experience it again, now reconfigured after the composer’s inspired collaborations with didgeridoo player Mark Atkins in the 1980s and subsequently William Barton in the early 2000s.  Jabiru Dreaming is a total delight in the many ways string sounds can be manipulated to create musical images of the land and allows a listener to float within the acoustic pictures.

A highlight was Barton’s own Square Circles beneath the Red Desert Sand, commissioned in 2017 as part of Quartet & Country, a project by the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival and its 2016-2019 Artistic Director, composer Iain Grandage, UKARIA and the Australian String Quartet.  The artist describes the work as: “… part of my journey through music. It is about the spirits of my land, my country, Mt Isa – Kalkadunga country”.  The haunting reverberation of Barton’s magnificent solo voice soared through the spacious venue as he processed, ritualistically, from the rear of the auditorium to join the Brodsky musicians on stage where the vocals were echoed and contrasted by strings plus yidaki.  This powerful combination of Western instruments seamlessly blending with the yidaki and vocals provides a sense of hope; the experience highlighting the power of music to transcend boundaries yet evoke memory, story, and culture also provided a sacred repose for those present, particularly amid the chaos of our world at present.

It was a pleasure to appreciate Brodsky Quartet’s easy communication and camaraderie with their audience, as much as their obvious connection as a musical group.  Their warmth alongside their prodigious skills makes for an enjoyable program and the genius of the partnership with William Barton makes for a fulfilling experience.

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