Virtuosic and versatile, an evening showing off the neglected riches of the recorder and the harp.

Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House
October 9, 2015

Both the recorder and harp suffer from a bit of an image problem. The humble recorder conjures horrifying memories of painfully out of tune childhood music lessons, and the harp can often be dismissed as something of an instrumental bon-bon, relic of the Romantic repertoire, useful for adding the odd lovely glissando to an orchestral palette, but not much else. Yet in the right hands both these instruments are capable of extraordinary musical riches deserving of our attention, and with a well-judged, yet provocative programme, award-winning recorder player Alicia Crossley and American harpist Emily Ann Granger delivered a defiant demonstration, not just of impressive virtuosity, but of eye-opening versatility as well.

There is however one significant hurdle to overcome when putting together an evening of music for such an idiosyncratic combination: an unfortunate dearth of repertoire. Meeting this problem head-on Crossley and Granger have commissioned three excellent new works by Australian composers, whilst bolstering the rest of the programme with arrangements of existing works, with various degrees of success.

Opening their performance in familiar territory, an arrangement of...