Award-winning Australian oud virtuoso and composer Joseph Tawadros gave a wonderfully warm-hearted concert last year with his brother James on percussion and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Benjamin Northey in the Sydney Opera House. The concert has now been released as an album by ABC Classic, with music taken from the performances over three nights.

Tawadros

The album opens with the most substantial work on the program, Tawadros’s Concerto for Oud and Orchestra (with orchestration by Jessica Wells), which was first performed at Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s Metropolis Festival in 2017. Conducted by Northey, the SSO and the Tawadros brothers give a high-intensity performance.

As I put it in my review of the live concert, “the energy of Tawadros’ oud was writ large across the...