Chamber Music in Melbourne

Rebecca Chan  is a remarkable musician whom I had heard as part of the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) which she was a member of for five years and then as the violin part of the Australia Piano Quartet which I think is one of the best young classical groups in Australia.

When I knew I would be in Melbourne last weekend I looked to see what classical concerts were on and discovered that Chan would be playing as part of the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra virtuosi series in Moonie Ponds which is on a direct train line not far from inner Melbourne.

Moonie Ponds was Dame Edna Everidge's home town and on Friday it did her proud. The music was fabulous, but I found it hard to concentrate in the first half because my neighbour shared her hand cream with her mother just before the lights dimmed and the coconut scent became very overpowering as the cream warmed on their hands. After interval I took a seat towards the back, unfortunately too near a couple of women who didn't realise their comments could be heard over the music.

The only thing to do after frustration like that is to hear some more music as soon as possible and luckily for me the ACO was performing a program called 'Cinemusica' on Sunday afternoon. The ACO always seems to be able to stretch our imaginations and yesterday they were performing with Synergy Percussion, a group billed as being Australia's oldest and foremost contemporary music ensembles. It was a well curated program played with panache .... and no one near me applied hand cream or talked during the performance. I knew to appreciate it.