Sydney new music group Ensemble Offspring’s second concert in the Sydney Opera House’s Crescendo Series – following February’s Hark the Machine in February – saw EO stripped back to two musicians: percussionist Claire Edwardes, the ensemble’s Artistic Director, and clarinettist Georgina Oakes, the first ever Associate Artist appointed as part of EO’s mentoring program, the Hatched Academy. But between the pair, Beginnings to New Ends – solo and duo works spanning works by elder statesmen to rising stars – was an outsized concert that had the Utzon Room bursting at the seams.

Oakes has returned to Australia after ten years in Europe, where she studied in Paris, Vienna and Freiburg – with the likes of Ernst Ottensamer and Jörg Widmann – performing with groups from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra to Ensemble InterContemporain. Her research in Austria, however, focussed on the late Pierre Boulez’s clarinet concerto Domaines, the earlier solo version of which she performed in this concert. An open form work, Domaines consists of six sections containing cells or fragments – whose playing order is chosen at the performer’s discretion – which Oakes delivered from six different positions around the audience. Introducing the work, Oakes cited a teacher in Paris...