It was a foul night – the weather, that is. Cold and wet, Melbourne shivered through its coldest May day in nearly 20 years. For those who had braved the elements (a near-capacity audience in Elisabeth Murdoch Hall) there was plenty of compensation. Charismatic violist Christopher Moore directed a chamber-sized manifestation of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra from his instrument in a thoughtfully curated program of Pärt, Britten and Mozart. Holding together this seemingly disparate group of composers was the notion of the ‘concertante’ style; in other words an exploration of how composers pit smaller and larger groups of players against each other in a single work.

Christopher Moore. Photo © Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Moore, who is well known to audiences from his long involvement with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, brought his infectious enthusiasm and a touch of larrikin humour to proceedings. The orchestra, apart from the cellos, stood to play, and given that Moore was directing from the viola, practicality dictated that this section stood facing the first violins. Unusual though this arrangement was, it worked well and there was no problem with balances within the group.

Played as a sequence,...