When the pandemic forced Australian conductor and pianist Vladimir Fanshil and his wife soprano Eleanor Lyons to leave their adopted home in Vienna and return here they started giving salon concerts in private homes. This soon expanded and Live At Yours moved from front rooms to bigger venues, including the Great Synagogue in Sydney.

The personable Fanshil makes an entertaining host, but he also has the pulling power to attract the best musicians for his gigs and for My Gypsy Soul, the first of this year’s Live at the Great series, he snared a quartet of superstars: Sydney Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster Andrew Haveron; ACO Principal Viola Stefanie Farrands; former SSO cellist and now Chief Conductor of Queensland Symphony Orchestra Umberto Clerici and international Adelaide based concert pianist Konstantin Shamray.

Live at the Great. Photo supplied

Introducing the programme of three works – Zoltan Kodaly’s Dances of Marosszek, Johannes Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1 and George Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 – Fanshil said the Roma and Jewish people had a lot in common. Both were persecuted, both were homeless and were forced to move around and both had holocausts....