Australia Ensemble UNSW with Piers Lane

London-based Australian pianist Piers Lane AO returns to UKARIA in collaboration with the distinguished Australia Ensemble UNSW. Their program crafts a Franco-Australian exchange that luxuriates in delicately drawn character and colour, opening on a Parisian wonderland. Francis Poulenc’s incidental music for violin, clarinet and piano dances a whimsical twostep with the music of his predecessor Claude Debussy. Here, Piers Lane’s talent for ‘poetry and drama’ (The Age) takes centre stage in Debussy’s glimmering Suite Bergamasque.

Australian composer and political activist Martin Wesley-Smith’s Merry-go-round for clarinet, cello and electronics reflects on the fate of children in war-torn Afghanistan. The program concludes with Maurice Ravel’s Piano Trio in A minor, which propelled the genre into a new era, demanding both virtuosity and chamber music subtlety from its players to combine the sounds of 1914 Paris with those of a wider, more diverse world.

Featuring David Griffiths (clarinet), Dimity Hall (violin), Julian Smiles (cello) and Piers Lane (piano).