Music / “Infinite Possibilities”, Canberra Symphony Orchestra, Llewellyn Hall, November 23. Reviewed by ROB KENNEDY.

IMAGINATION is an infinite thing. In this concert, the Canberra Symphony Orchestra performed three ingenious works that took the audience on a memorable emotional journey.

With a warm welcome back for Jessica Cottis, conducting the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, the concert opened with “Infinite Possibilities”, a world premiere and CSO commission by Leah Curtis, who is a Canberra-bred composer based in Los Angeles.

Best known for her original film scores, Curtis creates music that sits equally in the head, the heart and the gut. With a hushed beginning from the strings, then solo violin from concertmaster Kirsten Williams expounded a delicate melody that was soon taken up by the oboe and then flute. The piece built, cinematic in scope, full of tension until a playful tune broke through.

A sensitive and searching work, the CSO equally matched the quality of this expressive composition. Fitting many visual images sad and joyful, this graceful piece ended where it began in a hushed stillness. The composer went to the stage and thanked the audience and orchestra.

Next up the “Violin Concerto in D minor”, op. 4, by Jean Sibelius, with Ukrainian-Australian violinist Markiyan Melnychenko. Lecturer of violin at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, and in demand as a soloist, Melnychenko performs with fire and sensuality. He has a spectacular technique.

The beginning was almost imperceptible until Melnychenko came in. The immediate presence of his under the voice tone until he moved into a passionate phrase, showed the quality of this performer. What a joy it is to hear a player with such skill and dexterity.

With minimal body movement, his solo passages were extraordinary. The composure of this performer showed how he is at one with his instrument while breathing the music. And Cottis was straight back into the swing of things. She knows how to drive and get the best out of this orchestra.

The slow movement is an expansive love song, the final, biting, fiery and perhaps as Cottis said: “The best violin concerto”. Romantic and devastating at its core, this music is used for some of the most tender movies in the most passionate scenes. This was soloist and orchestra at their best throughout this spellbinding concerto.

After the interval, for the final work of the night, Igor Stravinsky’s “Petrushka”, (1947 version). Composers study the score of “Petrushka” to show them how to create colourful and artful orchestration. The score perfectly represents the quintessential scheming trickster, who is Petrushka.

Unrelenting in its kaleidoscopic range of colours, this work crosses every dynamic and seemingly every rhythm and playful tune with everything woven into a magical story. This is “Petrushka”.

With a bank of percussion, celeste, piano and harp, the orchestral qualities in this work exceed almost all other orchestral music, except that of this composer himself, Stravinsky. The comedy, the pathos, the storytelling; it’s a book too, a magical book. And did the CSO make it sound spectacular? They sure did.

For the final CSO concert series of the year, they certainly saved their best for the last. What a night!

There is one more  performance of “Infinite Possibilities” by the Canberra Symphony Orchestra tonight (November 24).