Music / Her Music Speaks, Musica Da Camera. At Holy Covenant Church, Cook, September 14. Reviewed by ROB KENNEDY.

This concert of all Australian female composers, the second in two days for this reviewer, displayed the diversity and brilliance of new and older music.

In a concert curated and conducted by Shilong Ye, Musica Da Camera performed a collection of pieces by Australian women composers, fittingly titled Her Music Speaks.

Female composers, both here and around the globe, have been silenced and overlooked for far too long. Concerts like this serve as a partial remedy for the underrepresentation of our female composers.

Opening with Sally Greenaway’s Balkan-Batik!, the piece brought together two musical worlds. Javanese and Balkan styles fused to form a highly textured and highly coloured work that celebrated the marriage of ABC Classic presenter Ed Le Brocq. It was full of drive and melodies right across the ensemble of string players.

Dreams of the Earth, by Corrina Bonshek, started softly with a long phrase that rose and wavered. Like a lullaby, its gentle caress trembled to reveal what the earth sounds like to the composer; it was quite gorgeous.

Helen Gifford’s Phantasma evokes ghostly spectres. It sat uneasily in the ear in the sense its direction felt unsure. It was slightly dissonant, but with highly colourful orchestration. It told an eerie tale through a distinctive sound world.

Concerto for Strings, by Margaret Sutherland in three movements, is a daring work that shows just how powerful a composer Sutherland was. Her harmonic voice sits firmly in modernism, while remaining tonal. There’s so much to love in Sutherland music. Miniature musical stories fill her work while wrapped in an overall guiding theme. This sat on the edges of passion and power.

Betty Beath’s Adagio for Strings, Lament for Kosovo, written at the time when those shocking images were coming out of the war in Yugoslavia that took place between 1991 and 2001, has an overriding statement on the futility of all wars. Song-like, deep with emotion and feelings of despair; so passionate, it took the breath away. It was performed with a great depth of feeling.

Knitting Unicorns by Maria Grenfell followed. This music, with a quirky title, made a sensitive statement. Designed to transport the listener into the child-like world of magic and unicorns, it unveiled a story that offered hope and optimism for a stressed-out planet.

Elena Kats-Chernin’s Fast Blue Village 5 provided an energetic and captivating finale to the concert. This piece, like most of Kats-Chernin’s works, had a distinct and unique quality. With a pulsating rhythm, the music surged from the ensemble, creating a dynamic and multi-layered sound.

What a vibrant way to end a concert of fascinating music by all female Australian composers, which we need to hear much more of, right here, right now.