Even six years after his death, the program brings world-premiere performances of two Whiffin works – a Sonatina for solo piano which includes an original singing component, and a previously unknown Sonata for Viola and Piano, found in the Whiffin archive and restored for performance by Melbourne composer Allan Walker. The manuscript contains signs of inserted details written in the hand of Whiffin’s teacher in Paris, the celebrated composer and conductor René Leibowitz.  
 
Phoebe Green and Michael Kieran Harvey are soloists in another premiered work of the concert, written especially for them this year – Ancestress for viola and piano by Helen Gifford, in which she invokes “the unearthly music for singer and instrumentalist that was created by my ancestress.” From the younger generation of Melbourne composers comes a premiered choral setting of Walt Whitman by Jena Capes, whose teachers have included Helen Gifford.
 
Joining these varied new works from Australia and France, the concert also profiles the Italian composer Marco Molteni, a graduate of the Milano school in composition. Two of his choral works are performed for the first time, including a setting in the Armenian language of a remarkable poem by the Istanbul-based poet Zahrad (1924–2007).
 
Three new score productions in the Astra Publications series are launched at the concert: solo piano works by Lawrence Whiffin, including the brilliant Études, one of which is performed by Michael Kieran Harvey, and Helen Gifford’s new viola & piano work Ancestress.