Having shared a Prom with the BT Scottish Ensemble last week, the Australian Chamber Orchestra finally got one to themselves. This 17-piece string group has been going for more than 25 years, but there are surely no founder members left - it's young, dynamic, and very nearly cool, or would be if a few of the players weren't wearing tabards that looked as if they had come straight off a netball court.
It owes some of its dynamism to Richard Tognetti, its lead violinist and artistic director. He is a dominant personality - sometimes too much so, as his sound doesn't always melt into the blend - and leads flamboyantly. But he looked tame next to the Finnish pianist Olli Mustonen, who along with the mellow-toned trumpeter Alison Balsom was a soloist in Shostakovich's Concerto Op 35. Mustonen sprang on and off the keyboard like an especially dandyish cat toying with a mouse, an affectation at odds with the actual sound he made, which was direct and generous.
The soloist for Nourlangie by the Tasmanian-born Peter Sculthorpe was John Williams, the guitarist for whom this 1989 piece was written. Using guitar, strings and shimmering percussion, Sculthorpe creates a vivid evocation of bright light, almost balanced by darker passages later on. A melodious dance-song, its rhythms gently distorted, is introduced and then affectionately revisited. While some passages can become static, the work's episodic nature does still suggest some kind of journey, even though in naming the piece after a rock monolith in Kakadu National Park, Sculthorpe intended it to capture the feelings the place stirs up rather than its geography.
The programme had begun with Tognetti's own arrangement of Janacek's First String Quartet. With several musicians on each line, the work took on a new character - less brittle and introspective, more romantic and forceful. The players tackled it with persuasive drive and virtuosity, qualities that abounded later on in their crisp and sonorous account of Walton's Sonata for Strings. It is rare to hear an ensemble of individuals playing so sympathetically as chamber musicians - still rarer to hear one that makes the music sound quite this vibrant.
