Flinders Quartet: Australia Fair? Southbank

As Flinders Quartet celebrates their 25th anniversary, they reflect on their identity as an Australian chamber ensemble, curating a concert program of works in which the composers were likely pondering similar questions: who are they, who were they, and who do they want to be? Flinders Quartet revisit’s Deborah Cheetham Fraillon’s powerful and evocative string quartet, Bungaree, first premiered in 2020. Bungaree is a figure who should be an Australian household name, and thanks to Deborah, he is now part of Flinders Quartet idea of Australia’s, and their own, identity. Australia Fair? by Bryony Marks asks us to think about very important and fundamental questions about identity. And Dvorak wrote his last chamber work, the A flat major string quartet, at the very end of his time in America. Although he was inspired by the lush prairies and woods he was introduced to there, his musical identity was still so connected to his love of the landscape of his homeland, the Czech Republic.