Friends share the honours

MUSIC SELBY & FRIENDS - Melba Hall, September 5

FOR the latest in this series run by Sydney pianist Kathryn Selby, the friends were reduced to one: cellist Li-Wei, a popular adopted Melbourne son.

The pair shared Wednesday night's honours pretty evenly, although the cellist enjoyed the benefit of two virtuosic pieces.

He ended the set program with an arrangement of the Moses Variations by Paganini, a showpiece that came off pretty successfully, although some of the harmonics detail went missing in action and the initial theme and its repetition were announced with overemphasis. Still, the piece rouses enthusiasm by its hectic rush and the transformation of Rossini's worthy melody into a kind of instrumental calisthenics exercise.

In more serious vein, Selby partnered Li-Wei in two of the Beethoven sonatas: No. 1 in F and the well-known No. 3 in A Major. Both give the keyboard melodic primacy, but the string line holds many challenges, not least just being heard. Li-Wei urged his sound out, given great consideration by Selby who played with unexpected restraint.

Nevertheless, when it was her responsibility to set the pace, Selby held little back and gave full weight to the latter half of the F Major work, although the most rewarding pages of ensemble playing were found in the rapid-paced Scherzo and finale of the A Major work, both movements the recital's highlights.

The musicians also gave Schumann's Adagio and Allegro a persuasive airing.

Li-Wei reveals himself in music to be sympathetic to the Romantic school, producing a vehement vibrato in this work's opening segment and soaring soulfully through the languishing pages of its lithe pendant.

The cellist fleshed out the night with Giovanni Sollima's Alone. Like the Paganini piece, its prime aim is to display the performer's technique and temperament, both well in evidence here but tamped down by a lack of resonance.