ANAM Quartetthouse: go if you can

The Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) lives in the suburb next to mine and is a Good Thing. It’s housed in one of the umpteen magnificent town halls of Melbourne, in this case South Melbourne Town Hall and a lot of its concerts are put on by students, often supplemented by their teachers or some professional musician.

Now apart from liking the idea of listening to students play beautiful music, I can’t really tell the difference between lots of music students and great professional players, so what’s there not to like?

In any event in recent times a mysterious plywood box has been build outside the Town Hall. It’s a Quartetthaus would you believe and there are three concerts a day going on in there for the next week or so. The sound is a bit like being inside a set of headphones. The space is not larger than a largish room of a house. 52 seats are located in two concentric circles around a small circular stage on which four players play string quartets. You become aware after about five minutes that the stage is actually rotating. Which is kind of cool (In your case, owing to this article, you will be aware of this before you go, so please take appropriate precautions).

I went last night and heard a Beethoven string quartet and then a Janácek string quartet. It was very enjoyable, and cheap as such things go ($30 per person).

So I say go. Go Now. Go if you can. While you’re there you can find out why they spell Quartetthaus with a double ‘T’. And why do they speed up the rotation of the stage at the end until the players fly out into the audience (OK, I made that bit up. They don’t – but only because ethics approval would have been so hard to get. Maybe next year.)