The world premiere of young Australian composer Harry Sdraulig’s Flashout made a lively start to this program. Commissioned by the TSO, the 10-minute piece began with rousing brass fanfares followed by deftly scored woodwind and percussion sounds. The music maintained rhythmic energy throughout while the orchestral textures were colourfully varied.

Emily Sun. Photo supplied

Erich Wolfgang Korngold migrated to America in the 1930s as a lauded European composer of concert music/opera, and his idiom promptly became the ‘Hollywood sound’ of movie music in the 1930s and 1940s.

The Violin Concerto in D, Op. 35 epitomises Korngold’s luxuriant, late-Romantic style. Emily Sun’s reading did not emulate the dash and swagger of the work’s dedicatee Jascha Heifetz in the outer movements, preferring something gentler and sweeter. Although a tougher approach brings dividends in such harmonically lush material, she scored in her lyrically poetic rendition of the central Romance: Andante. Sun always produced wonderfully rich tone and unwavering technical accuracy; conductor Johannes Fritzsch and the TSO supplying finely balanced and attentive accompaniment. Aleksey Igudesman’s Si Señor was the virtuosic encore.

It was instructive to observe Fritzsch and the orchestra bringing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat, Op. 55 – ‘Eroica – freshly to life.

This is a core repertoire work for the TSO and the opportunity to refine details of phrasing, balance, and rhythmic emphasis in this interpretation resulted in something special.

The first movement, at a brisk tempo, had all the drama, rhythmic resilience and forward momentum needed allied to a certain dancing quality that avoided any feeling of the music being hard driven. The Marcia funebre was also focussed in its feeling of stoic grief, while the scherzo was buoyant and the Finale headlong and triumphant.

Superbly played, there was unanimity of purpose and dedication here that conveyed a sense of the impact that the symphony must have had on its first audiences.