THE AGE
MUSIC
Clive O'Connell

Selby and Friends
Melba Hall
March 21, 2007

CONTINUING her new series of subscription recitals after last year's rug-pulling from under the Macquarie Trio, pianist Kathryn Selby has formed an ensemble with violinist Niki Vasilakis and cellist Emma-Jane Murphy, a combination that Selby tried out at the end of last year with great success and which she is using as the focus for her interstate travels in 2007.

Other events in the five-part series will feature Selby in collaborations with the Janaki String Trio from America and cellist Li-Wei, but they will have to meet a high standard to match last Wednesday's season opener. Beethoven's Kakadu Variations give much of their focus to the keyboard and Selby vaulted through their figurations with her usual driving panache, although both string players had their moments to shine.

But towards the second half of the following Mendelssohn Trio in C minor, the musicians moved onto a performance plane that you rarely experience, particularly at close quarters as in Melba Hall.  The pianist is a well-known quantity, an experienced and forthright interpreter. Murphy's sense of ensemble and projection has been well honed by her years in the Australian Chamber Orchestra's principal chair. What you didn't expect was Vasilakis' soaring generosity of output, impeccably modulated to match her colleagues.

From the Mendelssohn's mid-Andante point, through the fluttering scherzo and up to the convincing final notes of the last Allegro, the musicians sustained their roles, individual and collegial, with an engrossing artistry of the highest calibre. My memories for the year will include some achingly moving passages in sixths for both string voices from this account of a piece that is all-too-rarely heard live.

After interval, the Ravel Trio in A found Selby to the forefront, unavoidably so in its ecstatic last pages, but here too Murphy and Vasilakis maintained their voices, giving the pianist exemplary support in her declamatory passages and contributing their insights and expressive depth to the slow-moving passacaglia, this work's core and one of Western music's most stately and moving deplorations.