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Janáček's String Quartet No.2

17 - 18 February 2023

In the Utzon Room

Sydney Symphony Orchestra

Classical Music

The emotional impact of the string quartet is fully realised in Janáček’s intimate letters.

Intimate Letters

Janáček’s Second String Quartet uses the full emotional range of string instruments to express the complexities of life, with soaring melodies and moods that shift restlessly from calm to ecstatic, intense and expansive. 

The work was inspired by Janáček’s love for Kamila Stösslová, a young married woman. The music twists and turns with the changing fortunes of their relationship revealed through their 700 letters. 

Grammy Award-winning American composer Joan Tower’s Rising is a work of perpetual upward movement. A dazzling, continuous expansion gathering intensity throughout, the piece is a dynamic prelude to Janáček’s Quartet. 

This virtuosic program is an opportunity to see Sydney Symphony musicians up close in the Utzon Room – an intimate setting that’s perfect for music about love and change.


Programme
JOAN TOWER Rising 
JANÁČEK String Quartet No.2, Intimate Letters

Artists
Sydney Symphony Orchestra Musicians 
Joshua Batty, Lerida Delbridge, Timothy Nankervis, Anna Skálová, Justin Williams

Presented by Sydney Symphony Orchestra

Other information

Venue information

Our foyers will be open 90 minutes pre-show for Concert Hall and Joan Sutherland Theatre performances, and two hours pre-show for Western Foyer venue performances. Refreshments will be available for purchase from our theatre bars.

All Sydney Opera House foyers are pram accessible, with lifts to the main and western foyers. The public lift to all foyers is accessible from the corridor near the escalators on the Lower Concourse and also in the Western Foyer via the corridor on the Ground Level (at the top of the escalators). Pram parking will be available outside the theatres in the Western Foyer.

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