The Goldner String Quartet has widespread and long-standing recognition for excellence, as not only Australia’s pre-eminent string quartet, but as an ensemble of international significance, favourably compared with the best in the world. Launched for the 1995 season, and still retaining all four founding members, the players are all well known to Australian and international audiences through solo performances, recordings and their concurrent membership of the Australia Ensemble @UNSW. All members have occupied principal positions in organisations such as the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Australian Chamber Orchestra.

In 1997 the Goldner String Quartet made its debut at the Wigmore Hall in London. Unanimous audience and critical acclaim has ensured the Quartet’s regular return invitations to London and many major UK, European and Asian festivals. In 2001 the Quartet made its American debut with concerts at the prestigious 92nd St Y in New York, and in Washington DC. Closer to home, the Goldner String Quartet has performed in Korea, Singapore and Brunei and has undertaken several extensive tours of New Zealand.

The Quartet regularly appears at major music festivals around Australia in addition to national tours for Musica Viva. In 2011 they celebrated the 20th Anniversary of the Music in the Hunter festival, where they appear annually. The quartet members have been a mainstay of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville since 1993. In 2000, the Quartet performed a major retrospective of 20th-century string quartets at the Adelaide Festival and in 2004 performed its first complete Beethoven Cycle in Sydney for Musica Viva. The Quartet also has a commitment to teaching the next generation of string quartets, and has an ongoing association with the Australian Youth Orchestra’s Chamber Music program. New works have been regularly commissioned for the Goldner String Quartet from Australia’s leading composers.

In 2009, the Quartet featured in the festival of concerts to celebrate the inaugural season of the new Melbourne Recital Centre. Highlights of 2010 included festivals in Jeju (South Korea), Coriole Festival (SA), Aurora Festival (NSW), AFCM (Townsville), and Huntington Estate (Mudgee). The Quartet’s appearances in the 2011 City of London Festival drew capacity audiences and unanimous praise from UK critics, and were broadcast on the BBC.

The Goldner String Quartet’s live recordings of the complete Beethoven String Quartet Cycle, released on ABC Classics won the 2009 Limelight Award for Best Classical Recording. The Quartet has numerous recent recordings for Hyperion; each disc highlights string quartets and piano quintets of a different composer (Bloch, Bridge, Dvořák, Elgar and Harty to date, with a soon to be released recording featuring the works of Tanyeyev and Arensky) with pianist Piers Lane. These recordings have received universal rave reviews including Editor’s Choice in Gramophone magazine and BBC Music Magazine, as well as finalist for the BBC Music Magazine’s Chamber Music Award in 2009. Also released are the complete quartets of Szymanowski and Stravinsky on Naxos, and on the Tall Poppies label, Volumes 1-3 of the string quartets of Peter Sculthorpe. The complete quartets of Carl Vine have recently been released on ABC Classics.

The national and international reputation of the Goldner String Quartet continues to grow from strength to strength, with invitations for 2013 including a national tour for Chamber Music New Zealand, Oxford May Music Festival (UK), Musica Viva Festival 2013, Huntington Estate Music Festival, Australian Festival of Chamber Music, and Music in the Hunter.

Review

"One only had to hear the opening bars to realise this is a very fine quartet indeed."

- The Telegraph, UK

"Full of airy textures and eloquently detailed inner voices...colours freshly minted, rhythms dashingly precise. All of it was quartet-playing of the rarest quality."’

- The Guardian