Every Selby and Friends season brings the best of chamber music, and Kathryn Selby’s illuminating programs always seem greater than the sum of the parts. For this season, pianist Selby is joined by violinist Natalie Chee and clarinettist Lloyd Van’t Hoff, both enjoying immense reputations.

Kathryn Selby. Image supplied.

The concert began with Johannes Brahms’s Clarinet Sonata No. 2 in E flat major (Op. 120, 1894), which was composed late in his life — having heard an inspiring clarinet performance, he had come out of retirement to write for that instrument. This work might be the feature in many recitals but positioning it first in this program prepared the audience for what was to come.

Brahms’s sonata is characterised by some gorgeous tunes, with the emphasis firmly on the musicality of the clarinet, which, in Lloyd Van’t Hoff’s expert hands, resembles a melodious human voice. At times the work evokes a quiet conversation between two people, and at others it reaches the scale and intensity of a Brahms piano concerto. The beauty of this work belies its complexity, and Selby and Van’t Hoff combined wonderfully.

Rapid exchanges between the piano and...