FLINDERS QUARTET
Elizabeth Sellars • violin
Wilma Smith • violin
Helen Ireland • viola
Zoe Knighton • cello

AGATHA YIM, POLYPHONIC PICTURES filming and editing
THOMAS GRUBB, MANO MUSICA sound engineering, editing and mastering

Filmed October 2025 in the Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre, Wurundjeri Country/Southbank

This project was made possible through support from Creative Victoria, City of Melbourne and FQ’s Fifth String donors

ANTONIN DVOŘÁK (1841-1904)
String Quartet No. 14, Op.105 (composed 1895)

I. Adagio ma non troppo - Allegro appassionato
II. Molto vivace
III. Lento e molto cantabile
IV. Allegro non tanto

From all accounts, Dvořák was desperately homesick when he began work on this quartet in A-flat major, having lived away from his beloved Bohemia for nearly three years. At the invitation of Mrs Jeanette Thurber, he had been engaged to head up the newly formed National Conservatory, tasked to “discover what young Americans had in them, and to help them express it.” The Conservatory was remarkably progressive in welcoming African American and other minority students. This, coupled with his vacations to a Czech community in Iowa, opened a new musical world for him - one enriched by African American spirituals and Native American folk music. Fascinated by these new combinations of sounds and timbres, he absorbed them into his own musical language: a Bohemian-American fusion. Yet this exploration of cultural identity may only have deepened his yearning for home.

Not even completing the first movement, the A-flat major quartet was set aside while he focussed on relocating and the oceanic adventure of the trip home. Once safely back on familiar soil, Dvořák wrote to his friend Alois Göbel: “I am basking in God’s nature and I am contentedly idle… I’m just lazing around and I haven’t touched my pen.” When he did put pen to paper again, he wrote his 13th quartet in G major: a sunny, jubilant and effervescent work completed in just four weeks. He then returned to the A-flat major quartet, satisfied with the first 111 bars, discarded the rest and set about creating his final masterwork of the genre.

You can hear the yearning in the opening bars in A-flat minor: a constant, questioning musical line that seems to mirror his difficult decision between the excitement of America and the belonging of home. The theme is soon transformed into the comfort of A-flat major. This large-form first movement is rich in texture, charming melody and rhythmic drive - Dvořák at his finest.

The second movement, in traditional ABA form, begins with a scherzo in the style of a furiant (a Czech folk dance), while the B section offers a sumptuous melody exploring all the chocolatey tonalities of A-flat major. Counter-melodies twist around one another before the second violin leads the return to the furiant. The third movement opens like a prayer, giving the second violin a rare moment of melodic prominence. Contrast comes in the middle section, with a pulsating triplet figure in the cello propelling surges from the other instruments. It ends on a heavenly F major chord, before the cello begins the finale in F minor - tentative at first, as if searching for a way home. The first violin then leads the quartet back to A-flat major in a triumphant homecoming, full of joy and exuberance.

Having begun his adult life as an apprentice butcher, Dvořák ended up writing this glorious A-flat major quartet. It just goes to show - anything is possible.