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Australia Ensemble: While the music lasts

22 May 2021
8.00pm – 9.30pm AEST
Sir John Clancy Auditorium
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Musicians in front of gold wall

Osvaldo GOLIJOV | Lullaby and Doina (2001)

Mélanie Hélène BONIS | Suite en Trio Op. 59 (1899)

Gordon KERRY | while the music lasts (2016)

Gabriel FAURÉ | Piano Quintet no. 1 in D minor, Op. 89 (1887-1906)


David Griffiths, clarinet; Dene Olding, violin; Dimity Hall, violin; Irina Morozova, viola; Julian Smiles, cello; and Ian Munro, piano

with guest artists Lisa Osmialowski, flute and Andrew Meisel, double bass 


"music heard so deeply

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music”

While the music lasts – TS Eliot

These words remind us that music is a universal element of humanity that can take us ‘out of time’. The opening work of this program is the evocative sextet Lullaby and Doina by Osvaldo Golijov, a set of variations on a Yiddish lullaby that metamorphoses into a dark doina – a slow Gypsy style – and finishes at a gallop. A more transparent soundscape appears in Mélanie Bonis’ Suite en trio, a beautiful, late romantic work of classical tonality and proportion, composed at a time that valued neither old-fashioned styles nor female composers. Gordon Kerry’s while the music lasts explores the nature of music and time in celebration of the work of Australia Ensemble co-founder Roger Covell. Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quintet no.1 closes the program with timeless moments of rapture and melancholy.