Selby and Friends in Concert

It would be difficult to improve on the glowing review that Harriet Cunningham gave these performances when she heard them in Sydney last week (SMH 17th May). “Long remembered… rich and expansive reading…this outstanding concert” were just a few of her accolades.

Yet it is possible to say something extra about the Kathryn Selby and the Janaki String Trio’s Adelaide Sunday afternoon ‘matinee’ in the University’s Elder Hall. Downstairs, the sound in the Elder can be as unforgiving as the Scots Presbyterians whose money built it more than a hundred years ago. Cunningham’s review refers to the “generous acoustics” of St Andrews Cathedral that was these performers’ Sydney venue. In the Elder, on the other hand, what they play is what you hear: none of that Anglican varnish, you understand.

All the more remarkable, then, was the Janaki’s glorious string tone and the sheer aural quality of Selby’s piano. The former was nowhere better displayed, I might add, than in the Hadyn-esque slow movement of Beethoven’s String Trio in G major, op. 9 No. 1, as graceful as yet as movingly inflected as could be imagined. Selby’s manifold talents were much in evidence throughout Faure’s Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 15, which ended the concert – and nowhere more so than in the exemplary control that she brought to the Adagio. And that Penderecki ‘opener ‘, his 1990 String Trio, was a splendid call to arms for those who might have lunched too well and perhaps unwisely…

The next tour of Selby and Friends stars - the word seems appropriate - the TrioZ, formed by Selby herself, Niki Vasilakis and Emma-Jane Murphy. They are playing music by Turina, Beethoven and Dvorak, begin in Sydney on 28th July and end in Adelaide on 5th August. No excuses!