Music / “Fire & Shadow”, Canberra Symphony Orchestra. Llewellyn Hall, March 22. Reviewed by ROB KENNEDY.

ORCHESTRAS are performing more contemporary Australian works because they realise, they can’t keep playing the same old music year after year and expect to find new audiences.

With Australian composer Iain Grandage’s work, “Dances with devils: Concerto for percussion and orchestra”, as the centrepiece of the first Canberra Symphony Orchestra (CSO) concert of the year, Australian music is finally getting its place in concert halls, as it always should have been.

With Dane Lam conducting the CSO, they began with the “Divertimento from Le baiser de la fée”, by Igor Stravinsky. This movement from the neoclassical ballet is often played as a standalone work because it has all the colours of a rainbow.

As with a lot of Stravinsky’s works, this one is modern and classical. And as always, orchestrated like few other pieces. With concertmaster Kirsten Williams on violin, the strings and woodwind led the music through a pensive and searching opening phrase. Movement could be felt in the idea of the music. It quickly changed, it set varying scenes through musical motion.

As the colours of the music slid across the orchestra, the CSO brought out all the flavours of this dancing piece in a delicious manner. The French horns made it bright and dynamic throughout. A top-of-the-mark way to begin a concert.

After an informative and entertaining introduction from the conductor about the percussion instruments used in “Dances with devils: Concerto for percussion and orchestra”, by Iain Grandage, the soloist Claire Edwardes came on to stage.

This is a major work in four movements. The concerto is based on selected books centred around the Australian mythical view of the bush where the principal characters are female.

Written for Edwardes in 2015, she describes the work as “incredibly crafted”, and it is. With banks of percussion instruments before Edwardes and working from several scores, it burst into life. Its volume is immense. It’s electric with attention-grabbing orchestration; there are few concertos like this one.

Moving across stage to another set of percussion, Edwardes opened up an additional realm of sound with chimes and a specially designed set of tubular bells set in buckets of water. It was a surreal experience of sight and sound.

Then the Waterphone, an instrument that Edwardes has made her own. She walked across the stage bowing it, increasing the spatial effect of its sound. What a work. This concerto told a captivating story, aurally, visually and emotionally. Edwardes and the orchestra lived and breathed it, and so did the audience.

After the interval, we got to hear from the artistic director and chief conductor, Jessica Cottis. Via a video recording on a big on-stage screen, she spoke about what she was doing and the final work of the night, which was Beethoven’s “Selections from The Creatures of Prometheus”.

Pounding into beginning, the unmistakable music of Beethoven. The profound hit points of this music signature, more than anything else, this is the music of Beethoven. Fire and drama breathe through this ballet score. It expounds a dramatic story.

Like all the works on the program in this concert, colour, variation and the music of festive dancing filled the ears of an engaged and highly captivated audience.