On a mild Winter’s evening the venue, Sydney Opera House’s Salon for chamber performances, the Utzon Room filled to capacity anticipating the remarkable offering presented by Ensemble Q Australia who are on tour to connect with communities through live music.
The program transported, surprised and inspired the lucky recipients present with an extraordinary display of the power of storytelling through music. Alongside one of Mozart’s most treasured chamber works, the Clarinet Quintet and Beethoven’s String Trio, we were treated to two beautiful contemporary Australian works that explore the way music can illuminate stories, memories and imagination. Award-winning composer Anne Cawrse’s Sonam and the Silence, performed by the eminent ABC Classic presenter, author and narrator with his lovely vocals, Ed le Brocq, The piece told the moving story of young girl discovering the transformative power of music amidst the uncertainty of life in Afghanistan. This was followed by Michael Leunig’s whimsical poetry springing to life in Calvin Bowman’s delightful Curly Pyjama Letters, which offered moments of warmth, humour and reflection.
FROM MOZART TO LEUNIG the performance was by Ensemble Q Australia who Limelight Magazine hailed as Australia’s top echelon of musicians. Their music transported the audience with their 2026 National Touring Program. The music was a vibrant mix of beloved classics together withcompelling new works. Bookending the new works we were treated to two of the great pillars of chamber repertoire, Beethoven’s String Trio in C minor, Op.9 No.3 and Mozart’s much loved Clarinet in A,K 581, featuring clarinetist Paul Dean accompanied by Adam Chalabi’s violin, Benjamin Roskam’s viola, Trish Dean on cello and Anne Horton on violin.
This creative troupe highlighted where chamber music excels as they took us through the enthralling sounds of the greats. The ensemble’s motto is to reach more people, more often sharing the deeper connection of chamber music far and wide. None better than tonight in this splendid venue that is Sydney’s landmark, the Utzon Room. Their rendition was flawless, with lovely intonation and perfect pitch conveying their excellence, musicality and warmth in presenting this intimate performance.
Ed le Brocq’s delivery of Sonam and the Silence, a transformative story about the importance of music as a currency for uplifting a young girl’s life in Kabul, resonated strongly with its gentle, yet dynamic narrative turning the oppressive silence demanded by the Taliban, into a soaring gift, lifting her to the stars and taking her deeper than tree roots. Le Brocq’s delivery had many in the audience with moistening eyes.
Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Trio, a piece dedicated to the wife of an Austrian noble Count Browne, was written as a young man composing the early trios and sonatas. Freshly arrived in Vienna from Bonn, he was a piano virtuoso, with excellent contacts in high society. He treated the key of C minor as a special domain for the expression of intense feeling. The first movement of the trio is marked by dramatic tension and urgency, in complete contrast with the heavenly slow movement in C major. He writes the opening bars in anticipation of the string quartets to come. The scherzo, back in C minor, delivers great vitality and rhythmic bite with the contrasting trio section in major. The Eneamble’s vivaciousness and dexterity brought to life this peerless piece. The work ends with an ever quicker presto, full of whimsical flourish of scurrying scales.
Calvin Bowman’s collaboration with Michael Leunig, a fabulously concocted musical realisation of seven of Curly Pyjama’s letters infuses the Utzon Room with the whimsical world of the characters, Voyager Vasco Pyjama and his friend and mentor Mr Curly of Curly Flat, by the shores of Lake Lacuna. The oratory matches stylistically to the subject matter, from the Academy of Ancient Music to butterflies, Schubert and gargling (guardian) angels. Its obvious to anyone but an emotional philistine that Curly and Vasco love each other, though they both enjoy their separate and differing lives and long to be reunited one day to enjoy peace and merriment on the sunny slopes overlooking the lake. Letters, of course, imply distance of time and space brought magically to life with le Brocq’s intuitive and sparkling vocals backed by the Ensemble Q’s harmonising backing.
Oh, be still, my beating heart.
Fun fact. The Mozart Clarinet Quintet in A major, K.581 written by the master in poor health, two years before his death, is a piece used in the final episode of the TV series M*A*S*H, tabled “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen” instigated when five prisoners of war turn out to be musicians. The rest, regretfully, is history.
Mozart wrote this work for clarinet and strings quartet in 1789 and its his only completed quartet remaining to this day, one of the most admired of the composer’s works. The first movement Allegro sets the mood for the entire piece, deriving a balance between the hymn-like harmony of the strings and clarinet. The second movement opens with transition that opposes the clarinet melody over muted strings. The third movement consists of a minuet, usually for two trios- the first, strings alone, followed by the second, a clarinet solo over the strings, where Paul Dean excels, his playing sublime. The finale is in five variations giving the clarinet a new theme in counterpoint with the theme of variations divided among the quartet’s violins played emotionally by Adam Chalabi and Anne Horton, the wonderful tonic sounds of the cello in the hands of Trish Dean and the smooth sound of the viola by Benjamin Roskams.
This piece was described as, “chamber music work of the finest kind”.
The concert took place on Wednesday 22 July at the Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House.
