The Seraphim Trio has an important place in Australian chamber music going back to the beginnings of this century, with adventurous repertoire including numerous projects in Australian music. The Astra Choir since its founding in 1958 likewise has a long tradition of premiering new work from many countries. The distinguished Australian composer Barry Conyngham has ‘re-imagined’ for this new combination of forces his Time and Tide – a three-movement work written for the Seraphim Trio with string orchestra in 2014, the composer’s 70th year.

‘Time and tide wait for no man’ is a verbal thought that leads to many possibilities of ‘purely’ musical thinking as well. Such possibilities are reflected in the flow between the instrumental and vocal elements at play in the new work – the inexorable movement of things, and the quest for human expression, transient or ongoing, individual or collective, where no sung words are required.

Time and Tide is joined by other works traversing boundaries between old and new, modal and tonal sound. Ravel’s Piano Trio is a rare monument of this chamber music form, re-thinking the sound qualities of the three unequal instruments and drawing on influences as wide as the composer’s own native Basque country and Malaysian verse. Philippe Hersant creates a hybrid of French and German tradition in his work for solo violin and choir Nostalgia – Through Adam’s Fall, extending from a Lutheran chorale into a prolonged meditative sonic state. Schubert’s single-movement Notturno also stands at a far boundary of musical expression, typical of his late music, described by the composer Dieter Schnebel as “in search of liberated time”.