Two Canberra musicians who pursued international studies will reunite to perform together for the first time in many years - including a world premiere.

Eloise Fisher and Edward Neeman both grew up in the national capital and studied at the ANU School of Music - she focusing on clarinet, he on piano - before eventually completing doctoral studies at the Julliard School in New York. They were friends who played "bits and pieces" together at university, Fisher says, but never a full concert, and never got together at Julliard for a performance, but have made time while both visiting family in Canberra now for their first full concert and their first performance together in over a decade.

The world premiere piece is by American composer Bretton Brown, a contemporary of theirs who also received his doctorate from Julliard. What Ensor Saw was written for Fisher and Neeman and was inspired by three works by the Belgian artist James Ensor, with the movements being named after them: Strange Insects; The Ornamental Cabbage; and The Astonishment of the Mask Wouse.

Fisher says of the paintings, "They're quite interesting, quite surreal," and some of the same feeling has crossed over into Brown's music which she describes as "quite modern, quite accessible" and often reminiscent of the artworks. For example, she says, The Ornamantal Cabbage movement hads a lot of fast notes, the repeated trills intended to represent the leaves of the cabbage.

The Polish-born Mieczyslaw Weinberg fled east to the Soviet Union to escape the Nazis at the outbreak of World War II. He became a friend of Dimitri Shostakovich and wrote many works ranging from symphonies and string quartets to operas.

Fisher found Weinberg's clarinet sonata in the library at Julliard while looking for works that had never been borrowed.

"Sometimes there's a reason they've never been borrowed," she says, "but my teacher said it was fantastic - he now plays it all around the world. He was really, really excited to share it."

The sonata dates from 1946, after Weinberg discovered his parents and sister had died in the Holocaust.

Another Soviet-era sonata the duo will play is by Julian Krein. Fisher says it's a more positive-sounding piece than the Weinberg, which was tinged by his sense of loss.

"It's not as dense and dark."

In a somewhat different mood, Neeman says the Australian Arthur Benjamin's Le Tombeau de Ravel is a set of waltzes inspired by the French composer's Valses nobles et sentimentales. that takes the idea a bit further.'

"It's almost like a set of variations," Neeman says.

And finally, contemporary American composer Paul Schoenfeld 's Klezmer Sonantina was, as the title suggests, inspired by the musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe with, Neeman says, a lot of highly technical writing in a folk-sounding idiom.

Both musicians will shortly afterwards return to their current homes overseas - she to Israel, he to the US - but Fisher, at least, intends to come back to Australia to live by the end of the year. And both hope it is not the last time they will get to play music together.