Brooklyn Rider’s final concert in its magnificent Chamberfest series features the string players of the Australian National Academy of Music in a program that showcases the potential of these young musicians and again highlights the depth and breadth of chamber music.

Brooklyn Rider opens the concert with Giovanni Sollima’s Four Quartets, named in reference to TS Eliot’s series of poems addressing spiritual themes. Commissioned by Brooklyn Rider, the first movement, Burnet Norton, is lyrical and colourful, and East Coker begins slowly and thoughtfully. The performers intermittently bark like dogs in the final movement of this enjoyable work.

Brooklyn Rider. Photo supplied

For the next work, Brooklyn Rider introduces the ANAM String Quartet of Olivia Kowalik and Jasmine Milton (violins), Hanna Wallace (viola), and Max Zhenxiang Wung (cello), who, together with visiting American soprano Ariadne Greif, perform the aria Am I in your light?  

This gorgeous aria is from John Adams’s opera Doctor Atomic, with libretto by Peter Sellars, concerning Dr J Robert Oppenheimer’s role in the final preparations for the use of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Ariadne Greif wonderfully portrays...