Australia Ensemble Launches 2022 Season

The Australia Ensemble UNSW returns to the stage in 2022 for its 43rd annual subscription season with Time is a River.

Full of aching nostalgia, cascades of passion and calm mystical lyricism, esteemed Australian composer Graeme Koehne’s clarinet quintet Time is a river is a meditation on ‘the resistless flow’ of time that bears all in its path. Much-awarded US composer Jennifer Higdon’s Dash (2001)  celebrates irresistible momentum, the speed that she sees as the goal of much modern life, in a work of coruscating brilliance that showcases the agility of clarinet, violin and piano. Flowing melody is the hallmark in Argentine composer Carlos Guastavino’s Clarinet Sonata (1970) whose musical philosophy was simply ‘I love to sing’. This sonata is an immensely charming neoclassical work in which two dramatic, dance-inspired movements frame an andante full of liquid flourishes and melancholy love songs. Mozart wrote his last chamber work, the E-flat String Quintet for a mysterious ‘Hungarian music-lover’ during his last year at around the time of The Magic Flute. The opera and the quintet share much energetic humour and what has been called ‘sweet gravity’.

The program: Jennifer HIGDON | Dash (2001)/ Carlos GUASTAVINO | Clarinet Sonata (1970)/ Graeme KOEHNE | Time is a river (2010)/

Wolfgang MOZART | String Quintet in E flat K614 (1791)

The performers: David Griffiths, clarinet/ Dene Olding, violin/ Dimity Hall, violin/ Irina Morozova, viola/ Julian Smiles, cello/ and Ian Munro, piano/ guest artist Tobias Breider, viola