It was to be a feast of fives in Ensemble Q’s first concert of the 2024 season with an eclectic mix of five quintets spanning over 200 years to create an emotive kaleidoscope of music.

Married couple and accomplished musicians Trish and Paul Dean formed the Brisbane chamber group Ensemble Q in 2017, dedicated to performing undiscovered masterpieces with Australia’s top echelon of musicians. Their reputation and creative approach to chamber music have enticed two new musicians to the Ensemble Q fold in violinist and Artistic Director of the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, Sophie Rowell and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s Principal Viola, Christopher Moore.

Ensemble Q performs The Trout. Photo © Peter Wallis

The reversed seating with the smaller audience at the back of the stage was ideal for an intimate chamber concert. David Mitchell’s woody bassoon bounced melodically around the vast QPAC concert hall in Anton Reicha’s 1816 Variations for Bassoon and Strings.

Renowned as the founder of the wind quintet genre and even respected by Beethoven, Reicha tests the virtuosity of the bassoon with fast fingering and large intervals. Mitchell seemed totally at ease throughout the inventive piece, delivering a delightful introduction to the afternoon.

A rarely played and beautifully harmonic Theme and Variations for Flute and String Quartet by the American Amy Beach highlighted the versatility of Queensland Symphony Orchestra’s principal flautist Alison Mitchell.

Beach is little known, yet she was a prolific and important female composer of the 19th and 20th centuries. She endured a restrictive marriage which shackled her musical creativity until the death of her husband. Released, she went on to produce over 300 compositions during her remaining 25 years.

The long romantic introduction from the strings was eventually echoed by the haunting flute of Mitchell in the first of six variations. The beautiful ethereal theme is reinvented throughout each varied movement, contrasting waltzes with juddering strings and contrapuntal syncopation in the sixth.

Sophie Rowell, Ensemble Q’s The Trout. Photo © Peter Wallis

Trish Dean’s passionate solo on the cello in the fifth movement Largo di molto, led to a jolly fugue until the flute glided on a magical Persian inspired carpet ride to reach a sultry end.

Paul Dean described how he had instantly fallen in love with Western Australian Lachlan Skipworth’s Clarinet Quintet. It was composed in 2016, when he won the prestigious Paul Lowin Prize for orchestral composition.

The mercifully brief shrieks and moans as Dean tortured his clarinet whilst the violins uttered suppressed screams were shocking and deliberate. Skipworth described the clashing piece as a dystopian response to our current time.

The first half closed with a slow-paced Idyll for Horn and String Quartet by the Russian composer Glazunov. Its sedately paced grandeur was matched by the creme-caramel silkiness of Peter Luff’s French horn and balletic strings.

Ensemble Q’s Trout Quintet by Schubert was exquisite and the best I’ve heard. The five movements that often accompany Schubert’s poem, written in German, portrays the joy of watching the freedom of the fish in the crystal clear river of the Alps, before a moody transition that sees a fisherman instantly snatch it away with his rod. The nursery rhyme-styled tune has now been further popularised by Samsung with a tinny electronic version signalling the end of its washing machine cycles.

Ensemble Q performs The Trout. Photo © Peter Wallis

Due to the proximity of the audience, it was the perfect opportunity to observe the impassioned musicians in their natural habitat. Daniel De Borah’s delicate fingers scampered like a spider across the piano keys with both hands playing the melodic line an octave apart. Phoebe Russell danced with her tall, dark and handsome double bass whilst her fingers lovingly caressed the strings.

Dean cradled her cello and Rowell and Moore nuzzled into their tailpieces during the joyous five movements which glittered and sparkled like the swimming trout.

After a knowing smile from Dean, they launched into the iconic fourth movement with the violin and viola frolicking with the tune while the others trail in the undercurrent swapping around until all five instruments have sung the jaunty melody. The triplets in the fifth movement add a complicated reinterpretation of the simplistic catchy melody. The ubiquitous tune persists in various guises until the musicians finished harmoniously with a sumptuously satisfying A flat major finale.

Paul Dean had commented on how Ensemble Q had embraced the theme of five with five movements in The Trout and five carefully selected quintets by Trish using the five staves, and even mentioning how stars had five points amongst many other things such as fishing for stars in reviews.

Ensemble Q’s The Trout was exquisite and executed with aplomb with no flounders or red herrings. The creative and entertaining programme was delivered with a flourish by musicians at their peak.

Be sure to book to see their remaining two concerts in the 2024 season to hear the folk influence on classical music in Boots & All on 4 August and a family delight with Frankenstein!! & The Goose’s Mum on 3 November, both at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre in Brisbane.