Canberra International Music Festival / Echoes of the Iron Curtain, Satu Vänskä and Konstantin Shamray. At High Court of Australia,  May 2. Reviewed by NICK HORN.

As the afternoon light poured into the soaring atrium of that brutalist masterpiece, the High Court of Australia, festival-goers gathered to listen to a stunning tribute to master composers working under the Soviet regime by Satu Vänskä on violin and Konstantin Shamray on piano.

Gelina Ustvolskaya was tagged the lady with the hammer. Her Sonata for Violin and Piano shows us why, and the duo took no prisoners in a ferocious performance. A relentless five-note theme pervades this work, while the piano relentlessly marches up and down the keyboard. Glimpses of lyricism appear; the dynamic is gradually peeled back, with an ominous effect; but those five notes return, ever more forcefully, Vänskä pushing them out of her instrument violently with ferocious up-bowing.

On the piano Shamray expertly evoked the sonata’s austere style, and despite minimal harmonic, rhythmic or thematic variety – 20 minutes, no breaks – the duo captivated us with the power of this work. Finally we were released by five sharp knocks on the violin’s body, repeated, signalling the end of something – we were not sure what.

It was a great relief, then, to sit back and soak up a delightful performance of 10 of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Preludes for Violin and Piano. The selection was artfully arranged, including lyrical arias – Vänskä drawing an exquisite tone from the high harmonics of the violin – charming folk tunes bent slightly out of shape, a furious scalistic study, a stately march and a rustic dance in which the piano let it rip, Bartók-style. Vänskä and Shamray were equally at home with the playful mood of these vignettes as with the stringent demands of the other works on the program.

After the break, a treat awaited for those of us who value the contemplative aesthetic of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. Fratres (his generic three-part composition) was performed here in an arrangement for violin and piano. After Vänskä introduced the work with other-worldly harmonic arpeggios, her partner came in with a recurring chord sequence on the piano, as in a passacaglia, over which prayer-like variations were laid. Pärt teaches us to listen to the silence between notes, a negative space sensitively carved out by the duo this afternoon.

Sergei Prokofiev’s demanding Violin Sonata No. 1 in F minor was a fitting conclusion. It is a work of sudden contrasts and shifting moods, from major to minor, from spooky violin scales likened by the composer to wind whistling through a graveyard, to a brusquely assertive allegro with multiple-stopping by Vänskä and cluster-bombs from Shamray exploding beside her. The partnership was at its confident best in argumentative dialogue and sensitive mutual support throughout.

It was a privilege to experience the extraordinary artistry, and sensitive partnership, of these wonderful musicians as they presented challenging, captivating and beautiful works, brought to life again this afternoon as echoes from a fallen empire.