Youth and beauty on Janaki's side with impeccable Penderecki

SELBY & FRIENDS - Melba Hall, May 16

BEFORE the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition begins in July, it might be a salutary if chastening experience for many of the entrants to hear the Janaki String Trio in action, just to realise what can be achieved by dedicated, expert young musicians in a short time-span. Yes, I know that the upcoming competition involves string quartets and piano trios only, but the experience of watching music of this genre take splendid shape in real time is what the Janaki Trio provides in full measure.

The group has been brought to Melbourne from the US to participate in the recital series run by Sydney pianist Kathryn Selby, who is managing to attract sizeable audiences to these events, capitalising on excellent foundation work and a loyal audience built up in her years as pianist with the Macquarie Trio. Not to play down that fine ensemble, but this year Selby has contributed to a splendid reading of the Ravel Trio with her new friend-collaborators, violinist Niki Vasilakis and cellist Emma-Jane Murphy.

In Wednesday's concert, the Janaki ensemble opened with a razor-sharp interpretation of the String Trio by Penderecki from 1990, an energetic work by the Polish master and one that gives its exponents plenty of room to shine, notably in the first movement's equally spot-lit solo cadenzas. Violist Katie Kadarauch projects a most attractive timbre, intonatively secure and even across her instrument's range. Violinist Serena McKinney and cellist Arnold Choi contributed in equal measure to this impeccably articulated performance, as near ideal as you will hear in such close-quarter conditions.

The trio continued to exercise a no-nonsense approach in Beethoven's G Major Trio from the Op. 9 set with technical mastery, witness to the hard work they have exercised in their two-year collaboration.

Every so often you wondered about McKinney's or Choi's pitch on a particular note; for the rest, the group's output was finely shaped, informed by an individuality of vision and certainly exciting, although some of the speeds impressed as flamboyantly fast.

Selby joined in for the program's last element, the Faure Piano Quartet No. 1. Here, as in the Penderecki, the players' realisation of the score impressed for its authority, the string musicians standing up to Selby's spacious, unapologetic dynamic in the opening movement. But the real reasons you would want aspiring chamber musicians to hear a performance of this calibre are qualities such as the striking unanimity in octave and unison passages, co-ordination across sustained paragraphs, and finely calculated weighting in all lines for dynamic levels.

If Selby gave Faure a firm voice, she also found whimsy in the scherzo movement and an explosive energy for the finale, well countered by the Janaki youngsters, in particular McKinney, whose consistent, clearly etched part made you almost forget her pre-Beethoven talk, which brought to this mind uncharitable reminiscences of The Gilmore Girls.