Piers Lane brings French polish and Australian edge to UKARIA

Piers Lane AO returns to UKARIA Cultural Centre on 1 November 2026, joining the Australia Ensemble UNSW for a program built around French and Australian chamber repertoire. It's a pairing that makes sense on paper and, from the shape of the notes, in practice too: Lane's reputation for finding the poetry inside virtuosic writing suits this repertoire down to the ground.

The afternoon opens with Francis Poulenc's incidental music for L'Invitation au Château, a work that sets the tone before moving into Debussy's Suite Bergamasque. That's where Lane's touch should really tell. Debussy's keyboard writing lives or dies on colour and restraint, and pairing it with Poulenc's theatrical score gives the first half a clear throughline of French wit and shimmer.

The second half turns darker and more contemporary. Martin Wesley-Smith's Merry-go-round, written for clarinet, cello and electronics and premiered in 2002, deals with the fate of children in war-torn Afghanistan. The notes describe a piece that starts with deceptive lightness, almost Lewis Carroll in its logic, before it tips into something far more raw. It's a bold inclusion alongside the French canon, and one that should give the program real weight rather than just polish.

Ravel's Piano Trio in A minor closes the concert. Composed on the cusp of World War I, it's one of the pieces that pushed the piano trio genre forward, asking for both individual virtuosity and the kind of listening and restraint chamber music demands. It's a substantial way to end an afternoon that has already covered a lot of emotional ground.

The personnel here is exactly the sort of lineup UKARIA audiences expect: David Griffiths on clarinet, Dimity Hall on violin, Julian Smiles on cello, and Lane at the piano. All are musicians with long histories in Australian chamber music, and the Australia Ensemble UNSW's reputation for precision should sit well against Lane's more romantic instincts.

The performance runs around two hours, with a 25-minute interval and complimentary afternoon tea included. For those wanting to make more of the day, a pre-concert light lunch is available for $17. Tickets are $80 for adults, $75 concession, and $40 for under-40s, reasonable pricing for a program with this much substance packed into an afternoon at one of the state's finest listening rooms.