A thousand years before Johann Christoph Denner invented the clarinet at the start of the 18th century, First Nations people were blowing into hollow trunks or branches from eucalypt trees, imitating animal and bird calls and creating a musical narrative.

What the two instruments have in common is breath and the player’s skill in reaching and touching their listeners, and it was this commonality that was at the heart of Omega Ensemble’s launch for its 2022 season. Called Two Breaths, the concert featured artistic director David Rowden’s clarinet and William Barton’s didgeridoo and three works that both highlighted the differences between the two wind instruments and the cultures behind them, but also how they can combine and be reconciled.

After the light dimmed and the customary recorded tape was played, the tall and imposing Barton came on stage with a didgeridoo and tapping stick to give the audience a personal welcome to land.

William Barton performing Two Breaths at City Recital Hall, 10 February 2022. Image © Jordan Munns.

From the outback we were suddenly transported to Vienna by Rowden and the ensemble’s string quartet for a jewel-like performance of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, played here on the deeper basset clarinet as Mozart had intended, the work’s dedicatee Anton Stadler having developed the instrument with its extra keys.

Rowden’s remarkable breath control and smooth and even tone – hushed to a whisper at times – were complemented by superb playing by the quartet of Alexandra Osborne and Peter Clark, violins, Neil Thompson, viola and Paul Stender, cello.

Their handling of the glorious opening movement, the clarinet’s rich bass notes standing out in the rapid descending runs, was so on point that the audience spontaneous applauded before the heavenly Larghetto could begin.

The ensemble showed similar form in the Minuets andTrio sections of the third movement – at one point it becomes a string quartet – and the dazzling variations of final movement, with Rowden bubbling away in rapidly fingered passages dispatched with seeming ease.

Omega Ensemble performing Two Breaths at City Recital Hall, 10 February 2022. Image © Jordan Munns.

No contemporary classical composer embraced the didgeridoo more than the late Peter Sculthorpe, who wrote his 1975 Requiem and no less than four of his string quartets with Barton in mind. His 16th quartet is a striking work. Beautiful, powerful and harrowing by turns, it was commissioned 16 years ago by human rights lawyer Julian Burnside and inspired by the letters of refugees held in the Howard government’s detention centres.

Fictional detective Sherlock Holmes famously pondered “three pipe problems”, but the trio of didgeridoos on stage for this work were for another purpose. Differing in length and size, their varying tones painted vivid and varied sound pictures. Over five movements – titled Loneliness, Anger, Yearning, Trauma and Freedom – Barton and the string players evoke the emotions of the asylum seekers in a work which has as much relevance today as it did when it was written.

William Barton and Omega Ensemble performing Two Breaths at City Recital Hall, 10 February 2022. Image © Jordan Munns.

Osborne’s bleak violin solo over plucked cello chords and Barton’s birdsong gave way to increasingly anguished cries and calls from Barton in the Loneliness section. Edgy strings and complex rhythms mark the Anger and frustration of incarceration, leading into a didgeridoo solo and soulful viola and cello figures, based on a song from Afghanistan, to portray Yearning before it gave way to Trauma’s violent discords and Barton’s urgent tapping.

The work comes to a close with animal sounds and birdcalls over the serene and pastoral strings as freedom is imagined beyond the razor wire.

Equally powerful, but in a different way, the world premiere of Barton’s own composition Gift – Our Breath of Life brought Rowland back to stage, still armed with his basset clarinet.

Although best known as a didge maestro, Barton is a prolific composer for concert hall, theatre and film, as well as being a fine multi-instrumentalist and singer, and it was his haunting, clear tenor voice that introduced this celebration of country, time and humanity which started with sunrise and presented an eagle’s eye view of the world below.

The clarinet’s resonant bass register and didgeridoo intertwined and played off each other, summoning the energy of breath and life in our bodies. After the serene opening things became more animated with the strings contributing strongly accented rhythms in a dance-like section in which “the dust spirits dance upon rocky outcrops” and the wind whistles through the jagged spinifex.

The ensemble contributed their voices as well, exclaiming or sighing wordless sounds as, in Barton’s description, “we embrace each other’s breath to a new memory born”.

The eagle flies through the night sky bringing the listener to a place of rebirth, renewal and hope.

The piece was called “gift”, and gift it was both to the performers themselves and the audience – a truly special reconnection after two years best forgotten.