STEPPING OUT

CONCERT: Selby and Friends: Janaki String Trio
WHERE: Monte Sant' Angelo Mercy College
WHEN: Sunday, May 13

Remember the name

STEVE MOFFATT 18May07

THEY take their name from a Sanskrit word meaning ``self-realisation'', they play with a discrimination and maturity well beyond their years and they're creating waves wherever they go.

Formed at Los Angeles' Colburn School of Music just two years ago, Janaki String Trio combine flair with energy and panache and have already garnered music awards in the US.

On their first visit to Australia the group - Serena McKinney, violin, Katie Kadarauch, viola, and cellist Arnold Choi - stunned and delighted the audience in the first half of this recital with two widely diverse works.

I had never heard Krzysztof Penderecki's String trio, which was written in 1990 and which shows the Polish composer in an unusually tuneful and even playful mood. The 12-minute work in two movements features impassioned solos from all three instruments punctuated by staccato chords which leads eventually to the second movement, a lively fugue.

It is the perfect showcase for this young ensemble, so much so that they have adopted it as their signature dish and even include two versions - one studio and one live - on their debut album.

Beethoven's trio Op 9 No 3 showed the threesome to be equally at home with the classical-romantic repertoire - this work by the young composer with a foot in both camps. The bubbling and rhythmic presto finale fairly zipped along with the headlong feel of an Irish jig at times.

Kathryn Selby, formerly of the Macquarie Trio and now founder of TrioOz, joined Janaki for the second half for an elegant and beautifully-judged performance of Faure's C minor piano quartet.

We shall hear more of this trio, I'm sure.