Lunchtime Concert - She Speaks

Australian String Quartet
with Noriko Tadano  shamisen

Noriko Tadano  Ancient Love Letter
Noriko Tadano  Tsugaru Jonkara Bushi
Caroline Shaw  Nimrod from Three Essays
Fanny Mendelssohn  Romance from String Quartet in E flat major
Noriko Tadano, arr. Emily Tulloch  Staircase to the Moon
Alice Chance  Nose Scrunch Reel
Noriko Tadano, arr. Emily Tulloch  Vertigo

Our beloved Australian String Quartet join Noriko Tadano, a master of the shamisen; a three-stringed long-necked Japanese instrument derived from the Chinese sanxian, played with a plectrum called a bachi and a traditional instrument of the geisha. Chance described her Celtic inspired quartet written for the ASQ as “slightly psychedelic”. Shaw’s biblically inspired work addresses the power of language (whose loss led to the fall of the tower of Babel), whilst Mendelssohn here constructed a highly original harmonic world of German Romanticism.

Tagged in Elder Conservatorium of Music, Lunchtime series, Concert Series