Imagine crouching in the dark forest undergrowth: in the stillness, you see one droplet on a ferny frond and hear it fall.

A piano key resonates sympathetically, and your attention shifts to the pianist, a shadowy figure who is preparing a concert grand so that it will produce droplets of sound while the pianist lies prone beneath it.

You hear and see water in many permutations and, linking the pre-recorded experience to the live performance, there’s a close-up of the pianist’s fingers plucking at the piano strings.

That’s just one perspective on one moment in a dense but finely textured thicket of sounds and images curated under the title Duet for One.

Sonya Lifschitz: Duet for One. Image supplied

Duet for One explores what pianist Sonya Lifschitz calls “a beautiful folly” – “the desire to find a patch of dirt on this vast continent where you feel at peace” – coupled with the realisation that you never have found it, and you never will.

This immersive piece of concert theatre is the product of a long journey. Composer and multimedia artist Damian Barbeler developed the project over many years in collaboration with pianist Sonya Lifschitz and Tim Gruchy, a multimedia artist and software designer.

The trio drove thousands of kilometres with a customised ‘off-road’ keyboard (the Klavier) on the back of a 4WD to record sound and vision for this complex immersive experience.

The Klavier is no ordinary keyboard. This beautifully crafted instrument looks like a small, rugged harpsichord but makes a sound like a woolly ‘thunk’; not as clipped as a harpsichord, and not as resonant as a concert grand.

Sonya Lifschitz: Duet for One. Image supplied

Replicating the creators’ journey, the concert begins and ends in an urban environment. Ferns figure prominently, with Lifschitz passing on tales of the magical properties to be found in their seeds and flowers; incidentally also seeding the notion that we are looking to nature for gifts we are unlikely to receive.

Much of the time, Lifschitz is playing a duet with her recorded ‘self’. At one point, they combine to play a Bach fugue; at other times, they seem to be expressing different musical reactions. Visually, images of Lifschitz and the Klavier are superimposed on close-ups and aerial shots of a natural location.

This gifted creative team has devised an intricate immersive experience that presents layer upon layer of shifting perspectives on an environment in a constant state of flux. Lifschitz’s compelling theatrical presence caps what was already an extraordinary experience.