Kathryn Selby has launched her 17th season of Selby and Friends’ chamber music with a high-class line-up of musicians.

For this concert, though, a change in personnel was needed, and violinist Elizabeth Layton stepped in to take the seat of Grace Clifford who was unavailable due to injury. Selby, Layton and and cellist Benett Tsai delivered a demanding program of works by Johan Halvorsen, Claude Debussy, Nigel Westlake and Bedřich Smetana.

Layton, Head of Classical Performance at the Elder Conservatorium at the University of Adelaide, has recently been acting concertmaster for the ASO and is one of the finest recitalists. Multi-award-winning cellist Tsai is an outstanding young talent possessing not only great technical skill but a deep understanding of the music, and though born as recently as 2003, is already a well-established performer.

Kathryn Selby, Benett Tsai and Elizabeth Layton. Photos supplied

Layton and Tsai opened the concert spectacularly with Johan Halvorsen’s Passacaglia (1894), a duo for violin and cello, based on the beguiling final movement of GF Händel’s Suite No. 7 in G minor, HWV 432.

This technically challenging work consists of repeated variations on a theme with at times complex,...