Irina Morozova
Irina Morozova's viola is the dark grain in the Goldner String Quartet and the Australia Ensemble: Sculthorpe's birdsong glissandi and ritual rhythms, Shostakovich's rough beauty, Mozart and Brahms clarinet quintets played with warmth and searching intensity.
A founding member of both ensembles, she has long been inside the music that defines them. The Goldners' Sculthorpe cycle, made in the composer's presence, moves from austere mid-sixties lyricism through Pacific colours to later quartets of grief, rage and radiant friendship. The playing is committed, passionate and superbly controlled, every element linked to the whole. With the Australia Ensemble the same intensity shapes hair-raising Shostakovich: slow and brooding yet reaching outward, rich warmth that grips from the first bar, strings wildly in tune. Beside Catherine McCorkill's clarinet the group finds light-hearted joy in Mozart and the sombre weight of Brahms. Whether the line is sinewy, prayerful or fiercely dissonant, it sounds lived-in.
Performing as Goldner String Quartet
The Goldner String Quartet plays Peter Sculthorpe's complete string quartets with the authority of an ensemble totally inside the music: precise, tonally varied, and alive to landscape, ritual rhythm and sudden cascades of harmonics.
Peter Sculthorpe: The String Quartets, Vol. 3
Tall Poppies presents this third volume of Peter Sculthorpe’s string quartets as a tribute on the occasion of his 80th birthday in April 2009.
Peter Sculthorpe: The String Quartets, Vol. 2
The Goldner String Quartet, the string players of the Australia Ensemble at the University of NSW, presents this historic survey of Sculthorpe’s string-quartet oeuvre, available as a set on CD for the first time.
Peter Sculthorpe: The String Quartets, Vol. 1
The Goldner String Quartet — the string players of the Australia Ensemble at the University of NSW — presents this historic first volume, making Sculthorpe’s substantial body of string-quartet writing available on CD for the first time.
Irina Morozova also appears on
Mozart & Brahms: The Clarinet Quintets
Catherine McCorkill joins the Australia Ensemble for two pillars of the clarinet chamber repertoire: Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581, on basset clarinet, and Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet, Op. 115.
Shostakovich
Two of Shostakovich's most powerful and popular chamber works, given hair-raising performances by Australia's finest chamber ensemble.
Onomatopoeia
Long-awaited performances of Nigel Westlake’s most acclaimed chamber works, with outstanding Australian players. One of Tall Poppies’ most successful releases.