Sydney Festival: ACO Up Close: Legacies

“The finest chamber orchestra on Earth” – The Telegraph

The greatest musical creators look to the past, speak to the present and challenge the future. In this concert, ACO Up Close returns with a quartet of musicians, following the legacies of Bach and Haydn into our own century. Running through the program are moving stories of music left unfinished and challenges handed to future generations.

Joseph Haydn, father of the string quartet as we know it, was writing quartets until his strength was gone. Not that you could tell from the brilliant and vital Op.103, which stands at the heart of the program. From Haydn we look back to the expressive and conversational style of Henry Purcell and the intricate musical tapestries of J.S. Bach – master of the fugue. 

Jumping to our own time and living memory…Grażyna Bacewicz, composing in 1950s Poland, built on the clarity and drama of Haydn’s Classical model while borrowing techniques from Bach. And Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho captured the original intimate spirit of chamber music when she began Botanique – part of a tender musical dialogue between a mother and her violin-playing daughter.