Darlington Quartet, WAAPA’s Quartet in Residence 
Richard Gill Auditorium, 31 May 2023 

It’s a challenge on this cold, damp night to leave the warmth of my car outside Richard Gill Auditorium. But I am intrigued by the promise of musical birds and frogs inside. 

For its debut as quartet in residence at WAAPA, the Darlington Quartet is performing WA’s first live performance of local composer Emma Jayakumar’s Bell Birds Suite, alongside Joseph Haydn’s Frog Quartet (String Quartet in D Major, Op.50 No.6).  

During the welcome, WAAPA associate dean of music Jamie Oehlers reveals that the Darlington Quartet succeeded violinist Paul Wright as joint directors of the academy’s Classical String Program. “We got four for the price of one,” jokes Oehlers, before introducing Semra Lee and Zak Rowntree (violins), Sally Boud (viola) and Jon Tooby (cello).  

I love that they have chosen smart dress over black concert gowns and position themselves against the front row of the audience. I am barely four metres from Lee and I am in the third row. It feels intimate and relaxed, a night in with friends. 

Jayakumar introduces her work, and I am thrilled to hear a recording of this piece by the Darlington Quartet has been getting regular play on ABC Classic. Inspired by Henry Kendall’s poem Bell Birds (1869), Commissioned by the ABC in 2020, it is Jayakumar’s first work for string quartet.  

She reveals her ode to the Australian bush is loosely programmatic (that is, the music is intended to tell a story), the poem chosen because it reminds of going to the Blue Mountains with her grandparents to hear bell birds. 

The quartet opens with isolated pizzicato (plucked strings) shared around the quartet, then bowed glissando notes, instantly evoking an image of nature before a reflective solo cello melody emerges. The acoustics in the auditorium are fantastic – the sound is so close I feel like I am wearing headphones. The balance between the players is perfect, the spot-on intonation allowing the instruments to resonate fully. The movement grows in counterpoint but is wonderfully visual. 

The second movement could be a nod to French impressionist composer Ravel. It’s a driving movement, each musician deftly coping with the vast number of notes Jayakumar uses to create a colourful palate: “… their feathers unfolden, are the green and the purple, the blue and the golden” reads the last line of the stanza. The abrupt ending is so brilliantly precise that a gasp from the audience is heard. 

With each movement, we see Jayakumar exploring texture, counterpoint and technical skills, melodic lines flowing from player to player with superb shifts in harmony that instantly change our mood. It’s a wonderful first quartet, and the musicians take great joy in mastering Jayakumar’s intricate and detailed scoring, reveling in the melodies. 

The Haydn is a great counterbalance; its warm solid harmonies and traditional ‘violin melody over accompanying harmony’ structure feel like coming home to solid ground after soaring with the birds. There is not a pizzicato or glissando in sight, showing that while Jayakumar used every possible means to tell a story, music can also simply be an aural pleasure with no picture in mind.  

It might be called The Frog but I could not detect the famed croaking theme in the finale. Nonetheless, Lee’s perfectly even string crossings in this final movement are breathtaking. 

The encore is a Swedish polka arranged for the Danish String Quartet and it’s a delight. This hour-long program is perfect for a wintry night, another reminder that beautiful music well played can lift the spirit like nothing else. 

See what’s coming up on the WAAPA music program

Pictured top: The balance between the Darlington Quartet players – Semra Lee, Zak Rowntree, Sally Boud and Jon Tooby – is perfect. Photo: Stephen Heath