Music / Noah Oshiro, cellist. At Greenaway Studio, August 25. Reviewed by LEN POWER.

Listening to 23-year-old cellist Noah Oshiro playing his program of five distinctive works, you could only wonder how someone of that age could have achieved such maturity in musical performance already.

He began playing the cello at the age of three. He is currently completing his final year of his Bachelor of Music in Performance at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music under Julian Smiles and Danny Yeadon.

He has also studied in Europe, was a featured artist at the 2024 Orange Chamber Music Festival and has toured for Musica Viva as well as with other groups including the Brodsky Quartet and Ensemble Apex String Quartet.

His program began with his own composition, Improvisando, showing not only his ability with the cello but also his skill as a composer. It was a wide-ranging work that appealed to the emotions – dark and moody at times and then bursting with passion and colour.

He followed this with four very different works that showed his versatility. JS Bach’s solo cello suite, Prelude in D minor, was the first, followed by Julie-O by American composer Mark Summer, Water Spirit Song by Australia’s Ross Edwards and the first movement of Zoltan Kodaly’s Solo Cello Sonata. His performance concluded with Lamentatio by Giovanni Sollima.

It was a rich program of widely varying works all played superbly. In the intimate performing space, he established an immediate rapport with his audience with his confident and friendly demeanour and lucid comments about the various pieces played. The warmth in the audience’s applause at the end of this young man’s remarkable recital was richly deserved.