City Recital Hall, Sydney
April 11, 2018

After a few days of grappling with production deadlines and multiple forms of communication – WhatsApp, LinkedIn, emails and phone calls, you name it – how lovely it was to sit down to the tranquil opening bars of Samuel Barber’s Adagio. All the cares seemed to evaporate and as my shoulders dropped millimetre by millimetre I began to marvel at how such a simple piece of music can weave such a powerful spell. Of course, it’s the sinuous upwards, coiling thrust to that ecstatic top. Then the dying away and resumption. Like Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod.

The Omega Ensemble based their latest program around three works, under the brand Eternal Quartets, and the first half was given over entirely to the strings of Alexandra Osborne and Airena Nakamura, violins, Neil Thompson, viola, and Paul Stender, cello.

Omega Ensemble, Eternal QuartetsOmega Ensemble: Alexandra Osborne, Airena Nakamura, Neil Thompson and Paul Stender. Photo © David Vagg

Barber’s work was originally composed for quartet before he went on to orchestrate it for Arturo Toscanini. It later turned up as a choral work to the text of Agnus Dei. Heard in its original form it still...