Music / Beethoven’s Violin, Canberra Symphony Orchestra with Anna da Silva Chen. At Llewellyn Hall, until May 15. Reviewed by SARAH BYRNE.

For this latest concert in its Llewellyn Series, the Canberra Symphony Orchestra has secured several impressive talents. 

The first is guest conductor, rising star Carlo Antonioli, whose confident and generous direction brought every nuance from the orchestra, and whose commentary was engaging and succinct.

The second is composer-in-connection (a variation on residence), Peggy Polias. The program opened with the world premiere of her CSO-commissioned piece Storyteller – and it is fascinating. 

Spoken invocations to the Muses introduce three themes in a concentric, matrioshka-style format, bracketing a core melody for bassoon, before returning through the three themes to a spoken word cadence. It was innovative and beautifully performed, and I hope it will be recorded as I’m keen to hear it again.

The next piece was doubtless what drew the unusual number of very young audients to the CSO, the ever-charming Mother Goose Suite by Ravel. 

It was as nostalgic and appealing as ever – admitting my privilege enables me to overlook any cringe factor in the orientalism of Laideronette, Empress des Pagodes – I still love it, and the percussion was particularly sparkling. 

Another highlight was the dialogue of Beauty and the Beast, presumably later in the relationship given the relaxed tone of the pretty clarinet and the grumpy but humorous response of the contrabassoon. Anybody bringing their kids will have been very satisfied with this, as indeed was my own not-so-inner child.

But it was the second half of the program, the Beethoven Violin Concerto in D Major Op 61, that took the roof off. 

The CSO was joined by guest soloist Anna Chen da Silva, otherwise known as founding member and co-leader of the exceptional Alma Moodie Quartet (on top of her regular gig with the ACO). She gave an exhilarating performance serving both flair and precision, uncommon sweetness in even her topmost notes. 

Her performance of the solo passage in the first movement was confident and expressive; the violin languid and wistful in the larghetto. The rondo was vivacious and glorious, with support from the lovely supple line for bassoon. 

There are so many alternative cadenzas for this work that I was curious to see which would be selected; in fact this particular triumphant conclusion was the soloist’s own, and Beethoven himself could not have improved on it. 

The audience surged to its feet for a standing ovation that lasted several minutes. I’m a bit precious about the overuse of standing ovations, but this one was indisputably deserved.

Da Silva appears again tonight with the CSO; do whatever you can to get there.