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Utzon Music 2023 Brodsky Quartet Bach, Britten and Schubert

21 – 23 April 2023

In the Utzon Room

Choose one concert or come for all three in this 50th-anniversary mini-marathon of great string quartet music.

…a performance that ranged from fragility to imposing power and sweep...

The Oxford Culture Review

Bach, Britten and Schubert with the Brodskys

The Brodsky Quartet shares a birthday with the Sydney Opera House and in 2023 they’re making a welcome return to the Utzon Room with new first violinist Krysia Osostowicz for a mini-marathon built around the final string quartets of Benjamin Britten and Franz Schubert.

Each of the three concerts will feature a Britten quartet and a Schubert quartet in illuminating pairings that play off the composers’ contrasting styles while finding common ground in their expressive intensity and emotional turbulence.

JS Bach provides the entrées: Brodsky violist Paul Cassidy has arranged three of Bach’s “hallowed” sonatas for unaccompanied violin – miraculously transforming them from their single-line conception to the string quartet sonority.

Join the Brodsky’s in the intimate space of the Utzon Room for all three concerts, or come for the final program featuring the turbulence and Romantic obsession of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet and Britten’s String Quartet No.3, composed on his deathbed.

Sydney Opera House Presents

It is a joy to be welcoming the effortlessly wise and witty Brodsky Quartet back to the Utzon Room. This iconic group, having just celebrated 50 years, will be settling in at the Opera House to deliver three exceptional recitals traversing Bach to Britten. This is one for the Utzon Music die-hards, myself included.

Casey Green, Utzon Music Curator

Artist Information

Brodsky Quartet

Krysia Osostowicz violin
Ian Belton violin
Paul Cassidy viola
Jacqueline Thomas cello

PROGRAM 1

J.S. BACH Violin Sonata in A minor, BWV 1003*
BRITTEN String Quartet No.1
SCHUBERT String Quartet in G major
 

PROGRAM 2

J.S. BACH Violin Sonata in C major, BWV 1005*
SCHUBERT String Quartet in A minor
BRITTEN String Quartet No.2
 

PROGRAM 3

J.S. BACH Violin Sonata in G minor, BWV 1001*
BRITTEN String Quartet No.3
SCHUBERT String Quartet in D minor (Death and the Maiden)

* arranged for string quartet by Paul Cassidy

 

Other information

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