BY MIRANDA ILCHEF, LEAD WRITER
In early September, Melbourne Recital Centre will host an evening in concert with international classical guitar sensation Campbell Diamond and the renowned Ensemble Liaison featuring Australia’s chamber music powerhouses David Griffiths (clarinet), Svetlana Bogosavljevic (cello), and Timothy Young (piano). The artists will take audiences through a diverse program including some classics and newly arranged works for their unique instrumentation.
This concert is part of the Melbourne Recital Centre’s Ensemble Liaison & Friends 2023 series – and for clarinetist David Griffiths, it gets to the very crux of what Ensemble Liaison is trying to do.
“We called ourselves Ensemble Liaison because right from day one, our desire was to form a group that collaborates with others all the time,” Davis says.
Ensemble Liaison has truly lived up to its name, and an impressive 18 years of existence has seen the players collaborate with not just other musicians, but extra-disciplinary artists such as lighting designer Paul Jackson, Australian Ballet dancers, and puppeteer Peter Wilson. Last year, they worked with digital artist Paul Fletcher, who created live animations that reacted to the music being performed.
After such a long time playing together, it’s safe to say the members of this group know each other pretty well – and that’s where the name of their concert series comes in.
“We are very good friends, and I think that’s the bottom line,” David says.
“With chamber music, if you don’t get along, it doesn’t work as well. That’s the beauty of chamber music – the intimacy of what we do.”
They may all be friends – but David and Svetlana are also together together. And the clarinetist reckons Timothy brings something essential into their mix beyond his highly skilled piano performance: an ideal trio dynamic.
“Working so closely with a married couple is complicated,” David says. He’s quick to confess that he and Svetlana inevitably “bring our personal life to work”.
“We are lucky – there aren’t many groups that have survived this long without personnel changes,” he muses. One of the benefits of this unusual relationship is that their long-standing and close-knit trio have developed an intimate familiarity with each other’s playing. That’s something their audiences can hear in every note.
“We all know exactly what each other is going to do and, because we know each other’s parts so well, we can be spontaneous.”
David admits it gets harder and harder each year to think of an art form they haven’t yet collaborated on, which was how the idea for this concert came about. Despite almost two decades of artistic alliances, Ensemble Liaison is yet to play with a guitarist. Enter Campbell Diamond.
Campbell’s name was first brought to David’s attention by a long-standing Ensemble Liaison concert subscriber who also happened to be a family friend of the guitarist.
Australian-born and now based in Europe, Campbell has carved out an impressive career as an international soloist with more than 30 prizes under his belt. He’s a guitar lecturer at the prestigious Anton Bruckner University of Music in Austria, too. These accolades are made even more impressive by the fact that Campbell only started studying guitar at the age of 17 – far older than the countless number of professional musicians who first pick up their instrument in early childhood.
Their collaborative September concert will cover a huge range of music, with Australian composers Nigel Westlake and Stuart Greenbaum sharing the program with the likes of Debussy, Paganini, de Falla, and Piazzolla.
“We try to play as many different styles as possible,” David explains.
“We commission quite a lot, and definitely promote new music, including music by Australian composers. We have some very loyal followers, and they trust us to choose a program that is appealing to them.
“We don’t have to program Brahms and Beethoven to get people to come. They know that even if they don’t recognise the name of the composer, we have established enough audience confidence that they know they are going to enjoy it.”
The concert includes a series of duos – clarinet-guitar, piano-guitar, and cello-guitar – then culminates with an arrangement of Piazzolla’s Double Concerto for Guitar and Bandoneon in which the clarinet will act as bandoneon while the piano and cello play the voice of the orchestra.
It’s an ambitious vision, but David says that’s what Ensemble Liaisonis all about. He’s particularly looking forward to the workshop and rehearsal process “where we get to explore all the different instruments and find a way for it to be effective”.
Two of the pieces on the program are by Australian composers – Westlake’s Jovian Moons, and Greenbaum’s Cloud Eight.
“I particularly enjoyed the clarinet and guitar instrumentation as it was a new experience for me,” David says of Cloud Eight, which he has previously recorded.
“Stuart’s music is hard to describe; it’s beautiful and very rhythmically diverse.”
This edition of the Ensemble Liaison and Friends series is bound to be a well-crafted evening of intimate music, adding yet another feather to their rather well-decorated cap.
“We average between 10-30 concerts a year, and we don’t plan on stopping,” David says.
“The series might have to move out the Melbourne Recital Centre into my retirement home – but we will probably just keep playing. It’s really special.”
Hear Ensemble Liaison & Campbell Diamond in Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, 7pm September 8.
Images supplied. Credit Greg Barrett.
