Music review: Canberra Symphony Orchestra Llewellyn Series One

The Canberra Symphony Orchestra opened their 2018 season with a program of local and international favourites, featuring two living Australian composers, two of Russia's greatest composers, one of the world's most celebrated pianists, and perhaps Australia's most promising young conductor.

First on the program was the first symphony from Sydney-based composer, Carl Vine. Written in 1986, his Microsymphony is an exhilarating exploration of rhythm and gesture. Vine transforms a four-note phrase into a seemingly endless array of variations that are, more often than not, superimposed over one another in an ocean of overlapping textures. The orchestra, while powerful and enthusiastic, frequently lacked the precision necessary to make these complex interactions work.

Next up, the audience welcomed one of the busiest concert pianists around, Tamara-Anna Cislowska. What a treat to be able to hear such a fantastic, sensitive and agile pianist navigate Prokofiev's intense and lengthy cadenzas.

The composer wrote this, his second piano concerto while still a student at the St Petersburg Conservatory, and the work is full of all the angst, emotion and power one would expect of a young Russian virtuoso in the years preceding the Revolution.

Cislowska's playing was impeccable. She was in turns immensely powerful and charmingly vulnerable, channelling the young Prokofiev as the pianist battles with pressures and forces internal and external, all sonified by the (sometimes tyrannical) orchestral accompaniment.

After the thunderous applause in response to the concerto's bombastic ending, the soloist treated the audience (and orchestra) to a short selection of Rachmaninov. It is always a pleasure to hear a virtuoso play material they are passionate about, and this little window into her musical life was warmly received.

The third work on the program was an orchestral arrangement of a well-known piece by Elena Kats-Chernin, who was sneakily in attendance. Alexander Rag is a standard in the advanced Australian Music Examinations Board (AMEB) solo piano repertoire, and is a fun, jazzy piece the composer calls "light and a little nostalgic". Here, the orchestra lacked the agility and rhythmic bounce necessary, giving the impression of a group of tuxedoed orchestral musicians trying to read a jazz big band chart, while snapping on beats one and three.

Closing the program was Shostakovich's Ninth Symphony. Perhaps his most obviously funny work, this piece was written in celebration of the Russian triumph over the Nazis in 1945, or at least it started that way. Leonard Bernstein said that the symphony is a "short, hilarious circus – an all out fiesta – gleefully proclaiming 'hurray! The war is over!'"

Here the orchestra's woodwinds finally had their moment. This group of musicians are sensitive and versatile, with beautiful phrasing, especially evident during the symphony's many solo passages. Any shortcomings in terms of the energy of the strings were certainly not due to conductor, Dane Lam, who was nearly leaping off his podium with every downbeat. Shostakovich Nine is fun, and it showed.