Ever been to a concert and asked yourself – what’s it all about? Perhaps that’s the wrong question for some music lovers.
Still, if you’re one of us, people who like a narrative and pore over the program notes in the half light of a concert hall, you will appreciate composer Vanessa Perica’s latest work, No Feeling is Final.
Because it has a good story to go with it. The title is inspired by the poem Go to the Limits of Your Longing by Rainer Maria Rilke. I’m sure you will read about it in the program for The Australian String Quartet’s Rapture tour, which includes works by Beethoven, Janacek, Golijov … and Perica.
“That’s a mildly intimidating program,” Perica says when we chat about the concert tour, which begins at the UKARIA Cultural Centre, Mount Barker, South Australia.
The Australian String Quartet is Dale Barltrop, Francesca Hiew, Chris Cartlidge and Michael Dahlenburg. It is the country’s pre-eminent entity dedicated to string quartet music and is celebrating its 40th anniversary with this tour featuring a rapturous and engaging program showcasing the incredible capacity of the string quartet to reflect our humanity through music.
Australian String Quartet
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Commencing at Mt Barker on May 7 then touring to Perth, Canberra, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane and Melbourne, the musical program features Beethoven’s explosive Serioso quartet and the National Premiere of Perica’s No Feeling is Final – the composer’s first work for string quartet.
Perica’s work is paired alongside Janáček’s passionate Intimate Letters and Golijov’s tender Tenebrae, reflecting the wonder, complexity and fragility of human existence.
No Feeling is Final was recently previewed outside of its World Premiere at the 2025 Dunkeld Festival of Music in Victoria. The work was commissioned through the ASQ’s Richard Divall Australian Music Fund, a landmark initiative enabling the ASQ to realise its commitment to commissioning and supporting the lifecycle of new Australian music.
No Feeling is Final is a deeply personal four-movement quartet that draws on the chapters of the composer’s life, complete with its joys, twists and turns. It’s dramatic and uplifting. The title and spirit of the work was, as I’ve already noted, inspired by Rilke’s poem Go to the Limits of Your Longing.
“That’s a beautiful poem and I loved the lines … ‘Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final’,” Perica says. “A lot of the work surrounds the unexpected heart surgery of my husband Carl Mackey. This piece is somewhat autobiographical of what was a tumultuous period of my life. At one point I was in the hospital saying goodbye as they wheeled him to the operating theatre not quite knowing if he would be okay. Writing this piece was very grounding during that period. It’s a diary of sorts but it’s not all doom and gloom. It’s quite uplifting.”
‘The underlying angst in this last movement is fed by the fast pace of the big city and the internal battles that arise’
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Because the story had a happy ending for the Melbourne-based couple. Mackey, a saxophonist, recovered and is doing fine.
The second and third movements, in particular, reflect the drama. The final movement is inspired by a trip to New York not long afterwards, a trip that Perica was reluctant to go on but her husband insisted. She won a 2024 APRA Professional Development Award that enabled that trip. It was very inspiring and the fourth movement is a bit wild and depicts the time spent in New York.
“This trip was everything I was yearning for,” she recalls. “The music, the architecture, catch ups with old friends, meeting new friends, the food … walking around Greenwich Village and Washington Square Park every day. It was a joy to be there and reinvigorating after the months leading up to it.
“The underlying angst in this last movement is fed by the fast pace of the big city and the internal battles that arise in one in such a creatively fertile environment.”
Predominantly a jazz musician and composer, Perica finds herself crossing more into the classical realm at this stage of her career. In 2021 she was commissioned by Melbourne Symphony Orchestra to write the Love is a Temporary Madness Symphonic Suite, which premiered in a concert conducted by Benjamin Northey at the iconic Sidney Meyer Music Bowl that same year. She has collaborated with the MSO since and with her Vanessa Perica Orchestra has recorded two albums to critical acclaim.
No Feeling is Final was commissioned by ASQ’s Richard Divall Australian Music Fund.
For ASQ violinist Dale Barltrop, the program featuring Perica’s new work celebrates the human journey that can only be expressed through the string quartet medium by some of the most personal and moving pieces ever composed.
“This program is such a powerful way to launch the ASQ’s national touring activity for 2025,” Barltrop says. “These works brilliantly illustrate life in all its complexity and beauty. It’s a joy to bring Vanessa Perica’s first piece composed for string quartet to stages around Australia. Vanessa is a true star of contemporary Australian music and it’s a thrill to bring such a personal and profound work to life.”