How often do you get four harpsichords on the same stage?

In my experience, never, but that was the case when brilliant young French-American virtuoso Justin Taylor made his Australian debut with the Brandenburg Orchestra.

The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra: Night in Versailles. Photo © Keith Saunders

The climax of the two-hour concert was a performance of JS Bach’s reworking of Antonio Vivaldi’s Op. 3 concerto for four violins and the 32-year-old was joined by the Brandies’ Artistic Director Paul Dyer and fellow harpsichordists Neal Peres Da Costa and Anthony Abouhamad for the parts that Bach’s sons CPE and WF would have played.

It was billed as “Night in Versailles” – Taylor regularly performs and teaches in the palace – and Production Designer Trent Suidgeest created a faux Louis Quinze ambience with green plush chairs, candelabras, chandeliers, side tables loaded with bottles of wine, vases of flowers and peacock feathers and, interestingly, plastic palm trees. The musicians were dressed in dusky pink suits, matching ties and white trainers.

A billiard table – a nod to the game’s popularity at the French court – took up one corner of the stage, and with three harpsichords...