Melbourne Digital Concert Hall launched last week with a concert by musicians from Arcadia Winds, who inaugurated this brand new initiative by Adele Schonhardt and Chris Howlett designed to provide musicians with an income stream while concerts are shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pianist Elyane Laussade. Photo courtesy of Melbourne Digital Concert Hall

Set up in a matter of weeks, Melbourne Digital Concert Hall is now in full swing, with musicians performing to an empty Athenaeum Theatre, in a “clean performance environment where the musicians have had no contact with any other human” throughout the recording, which is filmed – quite beautifully – with a number of cameras controlled remotely. Less than a week since it opened, Melbourne Digital Concert Hall had already hosted five concerts before last night’s two concerts, which were a piano recital by US-Australian Elyane Laussade in the 7pm slot and a recital of art song by Nicholas Dinopoulos and Andrea Katz at 8:30pm.

Laussade opened her recital of French and American music – titled An American in Paris – with the second of Cécile Chaminade’s Opus 35 Concert Etudes from 1886, Automne, Laussade luxuriating in its...