Austrian virtuoso proves a fitting end to Utzon chamber music recitals.

Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House

November 9, 2014

Before taking up the clarinet 25-year-old Austrian virtuoso Andreas Ottensamer learnt piano and cello and the ties are still strong as this last concert in the Utzon Series showed.

Some of the pieces raided the piano repertoire and a few of them were arranged for the Berlin Philharmonic’s principal clarinet by his colleague in the orchestra, cellist Stephan Koncz.

The recital, which also featured brilliant 21-year-old Australian pianist Alex Raineri, opened with Australian composer Arthur Benjamin’s rather free but irresistible arrangement of three of Domenico Cimarosa’s keyboard sonatas into a concerto, originally for oboe then for clarinet.

If this work served to illustrate Ottensamer’s beautiful rounded tone and to show off the instrument’s singing quality, Krzysztof Penderecki’s 1959 work Three Miniatures, which predated his groundbreaking Threnody by a year, found the soloist in a different mood. His smooth and precise fingering and superb breath control made the quirky Bartokian rhythms and wild leaping passages seem simple, and Raineri proved an empathetic accompanist.

Claude Debussy’s Girl With the Flaxen Hair, arranged by Koncz, proved a delicious sorbet after this astringent fare before the Gallic charm...