The Goldner String Quartet is an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n string quartet

String quartet

A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...

 formed in 1995 in honour of Richard Goldner

Richard Goldner

Richard Goldner was a Romanian-born, Viennese-trained Australian violist, pedagogue and inventor. He founded Musica Viva Australia in 1945, which became the world's largest entrepreneurial chamber music organisation. The Goldner String Quartet was named in his memory.-Biography:Richard Goldner...

, the founder of Musica Viva Australia

Musica Viva Australia

Musica Viva Australia is the oldest independent performing arts organisation in Australia and the world's largest entrepreneur of chamber music. It was formed in 1945 in Sydney by violist Richard Goldner...

.

The Quartet consists of Dene Olding

Dene Olding

Dene Olding is an Australian violinist. He has had a distinguished career as a soloist in Australia, New Zealand and the United States, performing over forty concertos in recent years, including many world premieres...

 and Dimity Hall (violins), Irina Morozova (viola; an ex-pupil of Goldner) and Julian Smiles (cello). These players are familiar to each other as they all are members of the Australia Ensemble

Australia Ensemble

Australia Ensemble @UNSW is an Australian Chamber Group active since 1980.The group was founded after a proposal put to the University of New South Wales by musicologist Roger Covell and clarinettist Murray Khouri, then colleagues at the University. Since that time it has occupied a prominent...

 (a group based at the University of New South Wales

University of New South Wales

The University of New South Wales , is a research-focused university based in Kensington, a suburb in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...

). In addition, Olding and Morozova are married, as are Hall and Smiles. The Goldners have played throughout Australia and New Zealand, as well in the UK, USA, Korea, Finland, France and Italy, and with artists such as Boris Berman

Boris Berman

Boris Berman is a Russian pianist and pedagogue .He was a student of Lev Oborin at the Moscow Conservatory. He made his debut in Moscow in 1965. He joined an early music ensemble, at the time the only one in Russia, as a harpsichordist. At the same time he worked with contemporary composers such...

, Ian Munro

Ian Munro (pianist)

Ian Munro is an Australian pianist, composer, writer and music educator. His career has taken him to over 30 countries in Europe, Asia, North America and Australasia.-Biography:...

, Piers Lane

Piers Lane

Piers Lane is an Australian classical pianist. His performance career has taken him to more than 40 countries. His concerto repertoire exceeds 75 works.- Early life :...

, Daniel Adni

Daniel Adni

Daniel Adni is an Israeli pianist .He began his training in Haifa, where he made his debut at age 12. He studied with Vlado Perlemuter at the Paris Conservatory, winning the Premier Prix 3 times. Afterwards he studied with Géza Anda in Zurich . In 1970 he made his London debut...

, Malcolm Bilson

Malcolm Bilson

Malcolm Bilson is an American pianist specializing in performance on the fortepiano, which is the 18th century version of the piano. Bilson is the Frederick J...

, Brett Dean

Brett Dean

Brett Dean is a contemporary Australian composer, violist and conductor.-Career:Dean studied at the Queensland Conservatorium where he received a Medal of Excellence. From 1985 to 1999, Dean was a violist in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2000, he decided to pursue a career as a freelance...

 and Slava Grigoryan

Slava Grigoryan

Slava Grigoryan is an Australian classical guitarist and recording artist of Armenian heritage.He was born in Kazakhstan to Eduard and Irina Grigoryan, both professional violinists. His family emigrated to Australia in 1981 and he was raised in Melbourne. Grigoryan began to study guitar with his...

.

In 1997 the Goldner String Quartet made its debut at the Wigmore Hall

Wigmore Hall

Wigmore Hall is a leading international recital venue that specialises in hosting performances of chamber music and is best known for classical recitals of piano, song and instrumental music. It is located at 36 Wigmore Street, London, UK and was built to provide London with a venue that was both...

 in London, and have since appeared there regularly, as well as at the Cheltenham, Newbury and Brighton Festivals, and at the Saison musicale d'été de Sceaux in France. In March 2000, the Quartet performed a major retrospective of 20th century string quartets at the Adelaide Festival

Adelaide Festival of Arts

The Adelaide Festival of Arts is an arts festival held biennially in the South Australian capital of Adelaide. Although locally considered to be one of the world's greatest celebrations of the arts, that is internationally renowned and the pre-eminent cultural event in Australia, it is actually...

. In October 2001 the Quartet made its American debut with concerts at the 92nd Street Y

92nd Street Y

92nd Street Y is a multifaceted cultural institution and community center located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States, at the corner of E. 92nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Its full name is 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association...

 in New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, and in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

. It has undertaken three extensive tours of New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

, most recently in 2006, and also toured to Korea
that year.

The Quartet performed its first complete Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

 cycle for Musica Viva in 2004, a live recording of which has been released by ABC Classics. It is particularly interested in 20th century music, and plans to record all the quartets by Carl Vine

Carl Vine

Carl Vine is an Australian composer of contemporary classical music.-Career:Vine was born in Perth, Western Australia. When he was ten years old, he took up the piano. An adolescent encounter with Karlheinz Stockhausen inspired a period as a teenage modernist, a direction which he abandoned in 1985...

. BBC Music Magazine judged the Goldners' recording of music by Ernest Bloch

Ernest Bloch

Ernest Bloch was a Swiss-born American composer.-Life:Bloch was born in Geneva and began playing the violin at age 9. He began composing soon afterwards. He studied music at the conservatory in Brussels, where his teachers included the celebrated Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe...

"one of the year's top three releases".