2007 Season

Ensemble Liaison and Friends Series – Sublime Brahms

BWM Edge – November 1, 2007

Herald Sun Review – November 5, 2007
Reviewer: Anna McAlister

Going to an Ensemble Liaison concert is a bit like being invited to dinner with friends who love to cook. Clarinettist David Griffiths welcomes you with the warm, animated banter of a host who can’t wait to serve the wicked, chocolaty dessert he has prepared. Except that the feast he’s offering is music (and lots of free Hanging Rock vino). Griffiths, Pianist Timothy Young and cellist Svetlana Bogosavljevic clearly adore playing chamber music. Their enthusiasm spreads to the top-notch guest artists who bring a variety of instrumentation to the programming.
           
The final concert in Liaison’s inaugural series opened with Steve Reich’s Clapping Music. Mike Mower’s Sonata Latino (1994) followed in an arrangement by Griffiths for clarinet (instead of flute) and piano. Griffiths and Young injected maximum style and spirit into the jaunty groovy Latin rhythms. Yet the instrumentation, the form and perhaps the venue kept this work firmly in the contemporary classical category.

The Evening concluded with Brahms’ Quintet for Clarinet and Strings. Bogosavljevic, Caroline Henbest (viola), and violinists Elizabeth Sellars and Michelle Ruffolo formed a compatible, well-blended and cohesive quartet. Griffiths balanced sensitively with the strings. The transient musical partnerships that weave through the work’s counterpoints were observed with mutual eye contact. This showed deep, but not introspective, engagement. The work’s operatically tragic ending seemed to come all too soon.

Where: BMW Edge, Tuesday June 28, 2007
Reviewer: Clive O’Connell – The Age

Ensemble Liaison comprises of David Griffiths from Monash University on clarinet, pianist Timothy Young from the Australian National Academy of Music and cellist Svetlana Bogosavljevic, who is a Monash colleague of Griffiths. For the group’s second recital this year, guest Wilma Smith from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra was out to hard labour for two of Thursday night’s major offerings.

A sterling performance of the Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet by Stravinsky began the night. Griffiths span out his long notes in the first of these testing pieces with a sustaining power little short of spellbinding. The other Liaison personnel them performed Prokofiev’s Cello Sonata, written for Rostropovich and larded with passages that require a booming bass register from the string instrument. Despite Young’s considerable recessiveness, the cello scored most points in the works high-tessitura passages.

Smith brought on her two violins for Bartok’s Contrasts, contributing to a reading of exciting character in the final Sebes, although its finest moments came earlier with some striking textural inner-weavings, Griffiths and Smith a well-matched partnership. Hindemith’s 1938 Quartet also impressed for the players straightforward address and brisk outlining of the broad-beamed construct that focuses its spotlight on each contributor but impresses most when the counterpoint keeps everyone fully operational.

Where: BMW Edge, Tuesday June 28, 2007
Reviewer: Anna McAlister – Herald Sun

It’s not often we hear chamber works for clarinet and strings apart from Mozart’s staple. But Ensemble Liaison (David Griffiths, Clarinet, Svetlana Bogosavljevic, Cello and Timothy Young, Piano) air many pieces that are rarely played because their instrumentation is unusual. Musicians sometimes come together for one-off performances of this sort of repertoire, but they haven’t time to develop the common artistic understanding that Liaison has from their work. Liaison also perform Sonatas as they should: a duet rather than a solo with piano accompaniment.

This concert opened with Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo (1919). Griffiths’ smooth, buttery tone in the murmuring first movement grabbed attention as a softly spoken person does. The third was exhilaratingly quick and clean.

In Prokofiev’s Sonata for Cello and Piano (1949), Bogosavljevic wrung the maximum intensity from her cello in an interpretation loaded with temperament but never compromising accuracy. The second movement stood out for its quirky, playful pizzicato opening and chromatic throwaway figures in both instruments.

Hindemith’s Quartet for Clarinet, Violin, Cello and Piano is very flattering writing for the combination. Lyrical motifs are varied and developed. Liaison, with guest artist Melbourne Symphony Concertmaster Wilma Smith, warmed the work with glorious tones. The instrumentation has inherent balance problems – the dense clarinet timbre easily overpowers strings – but the musicians easily overcame this. An extended cello and clarinet passage in the second movement was stunningly blended and balanced.

This was a concert of polished performances filled with personality and detail.

That said, it was by no means relaxing. Much of this music is demanding to listen to and it made for an intensive evening.

Where: BMW Edge, Tuesday May 29, 2007
Reviewer: Anna McAlister – The Herald Sun

Ensemble Liaison is a new chamber group consisting of David Griffiths (clarinet), Svetlana Bogosavljevic (cello) and Timothy Young (piano). Their first 2007 concert, Fantasy, opened with the cello and piano duet Praise to the Eternity of Jesus from Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time (1941). The quartet is a precious legacy of the composer’s time in the German prison camp Stalag VIII-A.

Praise has obvious religious meaning and an introspective mood fluctuating between resignation and railing. Bogosavljevic’s fine bow control and use of vibrato made for a moving performance.

Recital repertoire is apparently unfashionable at the moment so it was refreshing to hear Brahms’ Sonata for Clarinet and Piano in F minor (1894). Griffiths played with an even tone and boundless lyricism, though the work is less effusively romantic than some of Brahms’ earlier chamber music.

Robert Muczynski’s Fantasy Trio (1969) and the Beethoven Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano brought the whole group together. Muczynski’s jazz and Shostakovich-influenced work has frequent cello/clarinet dialogues and unisons that Griffiths and Bogosavljevic played with engaging conversational flare. The highlight of the Beethoven was the perky theme and variations, its piano flourishes given suitably ostentatious treatment by Young.

Half the fun of Liaison was witnessing their obvious joy at playing together. Throughout the Muczynski and Beethoven they smiled and leaned towards each other.