Music / Tahlia Petrosian with ANU staff and students. At Larry Sitsky Recital Room, ANU. August 18 Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

THIS concert was the only Canberra performance outing for ANU School of music guest violist Tahlia Petrosian, the Leipzig-based Australian now famous for her “Klassik Underground” project where she takes music into unusual spaces.

A more conventional concert, it  gave an opportunity for her to pair for the first time with the ANU’s flute expert, Sally Walker, once a member of the very same orchestra Petrosian now plays with.

Two works, Hoffmeister’s “Three Concertante Duos for Flute and Viola”, and Bloch’s “Concertino for Flute and Viola”, gave us an opportunity to see this rare combination in full flight, the second supported by the ANU Chamber Orchestra conducted by Tor Frømyhr.

In both we saw Petrosian’s powerful  viola in dialogue with Walker’s flute, sometimes imitating the viola but more often soaring high in the sky.

Earlier in the evening Walker and Petrosian had been joined by Kirsten Williams on violin and Rachel Johston on cello for two dramatically contrasting works.

The first, Elena Kats Chernin’s “Consolation”, was originally written on the death in 2009 of  Matthew Krel, conductor of the SBS Youth Orchestra, but later re-written for Walker to perform with violin, viola and cello. This was a beautiful, sombre piece.

The pace picked up with Mozart’s “Flute Quartet in C. K. Ahn. 171/K. 285b” as each member of the ensemble was given an opportunity to shine in its distinctive six variations.

The first half of the program involved conversations of the non-musical kind, as Walker took the mike to interview the string performers, adding a pleasant, casual note to what felt like an evening of hands-on music-making.

After interval, Frømyhr and his young instrumentalists came forward to perform first the aforementioned Bloch’s Concertino, where the composer’s use of traditional Jewish melodies was evident. This began with a pizzicato over which Petrosian’s viola asserted itself and wound up with a jocose polka. This composition was perfectly suited to the talents of the young instrumentalists.

The concert finished off with Sibelius’ 1922 Suite champêtre for strings, Op.98b, a delightful piece made up of three jaunty short movements.

We heard that when Sibelius himself conducted the work, he was “coquettishly, swaying his hips”.

Frømyhr didn’t quite do that, but he and the happy instrumentalists might just as well have done so.