BY CUTCOMMON
When Affinity Quartet won the 2023 Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition, not only did the group take out the three most prestigious prizes, but it was also the first Australian ensemble to win.
The year before, Affinity was the first Australian string quartet to play in the finals of the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition, where the musicians picked up third place.
Across the past decade, Affinity has gone from international competition to world tour to residency and back. But they haven’t forgotten where it all began: the Australian National Academy of Music.
Now, Affinity prepares to return to ANAM to work with next-generation musicians on the program Sacred: Seven Last Words, which culminates in two public performances.
The group’s founding cellist Mee Na Lojewski (pictured below), who completed her time at ANAM in 2014, tells CutCommon how her early training and performance experiences led her to achieving substantial success with Affinity in the years since they started at ANAM.
Mee Na, you’re returning to ANAM having gone into the world and launched a highly successful career with Affinity Quartet. What’s it feel like to come back home to where so much of it began?
I enjoy reflecting on how much of Affinity’s journey since leaving ANAM continues to intersect with it.
The past decade has included tours and premieres with violist, composer and former ANAM artistic director Brett Dean; the ANAM Quartetthaus celebration of British and Australian chamber music; commissioning and premiering works by violist and composer Matt Laing (alum 2013) here and in London; and numerous catch-ups over the years in the UK, Germany, Finland, and Madrid with former ANAM colleagues and staff.
If you had asked me as an ANAM Fellow what I hoped to be doing a decade on with Affinity Quartet, coming back to ANAM to perform Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ with the ANAM string quartets would be high on that list!
Affinity’s original members all went to ANAM — how did you come together to create your group in the first place?
I founded Affinity during my 2015 fellowship at ANAM. Collaborating with Australian composer Jack Symonds, I curated a year-long program which featured four world premieres of Symonds’ alongside some incredible string quartet repertoire relevant to his work – Panufnik, Zemlinsky, Ravel, and Bartók. I brought together a flexible collective of my ANAM colleagues who were passionate about chamber music. They were a truly inspiring bunch, most of whom went on to leading roles in other ensembles and universities.
At the end of my fellowship year, Affinity Quartet won First Prize at the ANAM Chamber Music Competition. This encouraged us forward, and Nicholas Waters (alum 2016) and I took a great interest in generating future opportunities for the quartet.
In 2016, with our original colleagues Harry Bennetts (alum 2016) and William Clark (alum 2015), Affinity Quartet was selected for the International Musicians Seminar, Prussia Cove (IMS) and, with the support of an Australia Council Career Development grant, we embarked on our first European Tour.
At IMS, we studied with composer Thomas Adès and cellist Steven Isserlis; then we had lessons in London with members of the Brodsky, Doric, and Belcea Quartets; we performed in Berlin with Brett Dean, also at a house concert there organised for us by Noga Quartet, who won the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition in 2015.
Those were formative ANAM experiences and early Affinity years, and we are still going passionately 11 years later.
Reflecting now, over a decade after you completed your studies at ANAM, what do you feel were some of the biggest lessons you gained there about what it means to be part of a chamber music group?
Two things:
– That making the best music together depends on trusting and inspiring the best in each other.
– That to organise and sustain a group practically, it often comes down to who is prepared to do and to share the grunt work: all the planning and tasks that require time and effort away from your instrument.
What are the most surprising real-world lessons that you’ve learnt over the years since your time at ANAM?
Too many to count. It feels I’m always learning, both as a musician and ensemble leader. It can feel like a blessing and curse depending on the moment! Maybe I’ll choose just a couple:
– Ideas and thinking take time – and that time is never wasted.
– And one that came from Genevieve Lacey, my ANAM Fellowship mentor: ‘Never underestimate your listener.’
You’ll be returning to work with emerging string quartets involving ANAM’s students. What do you hope they’ll get out of this experience; what do you hope to impart to them?
Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ, which Affinity Quartet is also approaching for the first time, will be a great opportunity for sharing exploration of the string quartet form with the ANAM Quartets.
Haydn is considered the grandfather of the string quartet, and this work in particular has enormous depths of expressive meaning and harmonic language, both of which are so useful for shaping an interpretation of the score, and for exploring ensemble interlocking and interplay.
I hope to impart the joy of musical discovery, the accountability and beauty of each person’s role, and then importantly, realising all this together as a collective.
Why does it bring you joy to work with the next group of players who are preparing to follow their dreams, perhaps with as much ambition as Affinity?
It is essential for practising musicians to pass on knowledge and to grow from exchange with younger generations. It’s a continuum, elder to younger and vice versa. The energy and enthusiasm of aspiring string quartets will be exciting for us to experience.
We are looking forward to sharing our knowledge and tips, each of us having studied with our musical idols overseas and having worked closely together.
But there’s a special level of inspiration in working with younger players – exploring together how we can best interpret and express the score, deciding what methods might communicate the most, and how to inspire their best playing as well as their ambitions. That brings us great joy!
Why is the Haydn an interesting work for this occasion? What does it offer to you and the players?
Discovering the story and the text behind Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ is fundamental in approaching this work as players. As all religions interpret life’s meaning differently and uniquely, so too will we as performers. It will be a chance to explore a dramatic chasm of emotions conveyed in the text that it’s based on: Jesus Christ’s final words as he hung on the cross on Good Friday.
For me, knowing many of Haydn’s other string quartet works, I am blown away by the drama, power, honesty, and forthrightness that this music conveys.
I also love the flexibility allowed in staging this work. Haydn gave us three versions: an orchestral work (1786), a string quartet (1787) and an oratorio (1796). I can’t wait to stage the full work as Affinity Quartet has conceived it for this ANAM project: two antiphonal string quartets on stage, one double bass, interweaving movements for solo string quartet, and a final tutti movement with all 17 string players on stage.
What do you feel audiences can most enjoy from this concert experience?
ANAM has long cultivated string quartet projects within its walls, and these have been especially cherished by ANAM players and audiences. I have fond memories of the 2013 Brodsky Quartet x ANAM residency performing all 15 of Shostakovich’s String Quartets and later, several seasons performing in the visionary ANAM Quartetthaus performance space.
Sacred: Seven Last Words continues this wonderful celebration of the string quartet artform. During our March residency at ANAM, we’ll craft a unique presentation of this incredible 70-minute work in the Good Shepherd Chapel at Abbotsford Convent. We’ll be highlighting the different quartets performing each movement, and delivering for our audiences what we hope is a powerful pacing of energy in Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ.
Before we go, I’d love to know what you find most fulfilling about building a relationship with a chamber group over time, and performing in this intimate musical dynamic.
In a good chamber ensemble, there’s the perfect balance of working with like-minded players, sharing musical independence and responsibility, and developing a close-knit synergy that is earned together over hours, months, and years.
I find the challenge fulfilling: you must be flexible, patient, and accountable musically, refining things closely in the rehearsal room so that you feel both in sync and spontaneous with each other in performance.
Hear Affinity Quartet and ANAM musicians perform in Sacred: Seven Last Words, 3pm and 7pm April 2 in the Good Shepherd Chapel next to Abbotsford Convent.
Images supplied. Mee Na at ANAM, captured by Pia Johnson. Above: Affinity at the ANAM Chamber Music Competition. Featured image credit Kristoffer Paulsen.
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