Work: 3 Pieces for string quartet

The players gathered at the bar for a Scotch as the credits rolled. After three hours and twenty minutes of note-taking, I decided to follow suit.

Richard Tognetti’s absorbing programme mixed Bach’s Goldberg Variations with Stravinsky and Adès, played impressively and with characteristic exuberance and finesse by the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

The title of the latest programme by the Australian Chamber Orchestra is simply: Goldberg Variations. While Bernard Labadie’s ingenious arrangement of JS Bach’s Goldberg Variations for string orchestra takes up all of the second half of the programme, the first half was no less interesting.

Experiments in music and ideas brought together by the London Sinfonietta and guests at a special concert all about space and time.

Royal Northern Sinfonia hide a feast of quirky, inventive string writing by Shostakovich, Stranvinsky, Mozart and Schoenberg behind a sedate title.