Dances and Suites, Musica da Camera, at Holy Covenant Church, Cook, June 28. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

This concert, under the musical direction of respected violist and proponent of the instrument, Robert Harris, was a rich confection of music with a twin focus on music for viola and music imbued with the rhythms of dance.

Harris, who with his wife, the double bassist Dorit Herskovits (a former member of the Australian Chamber Orchestra) at times took up his viola to play, at other times conducting the full ensemble.

Dominating the first half of the program were two works by Georg Philipp Telemann, whose repertoire along with the viola itself, has been “undeservedly underrated”, in Harris’ view.

These  two works, Concerto for two Violas in G Major and Ouverture-Suite-in D, may have been influenced by Telemann’s eight-month visit to Paris 1737-38, which possibly explains some of the dancier flavour of the works.

The first, with Harris and Paul Whitbread taking the lead on the viola, revelled in both the assertiveness and the mellowness of the instrument. The second work quite literally referred to dance in its moments, with labels such as Sarabande, Rondeau and Courante.

In between the two Telemann works was Franz Schubert’s Valse nobles Opus 77, re-arranged from piano for orchestra by Wolfgang Fortner. As the name suggests, this was all waltz rhythm music, but waltz with subtle twists and changes in mood from sombre to sprightly.

Harris continued what had become something of a geographical journey, landing in Australia with River Valley Dawn, a descriptive work by Sydney composer Emma Greenhill, which he likened in genre to the Grand Canyon Suite. This work featured a beautiful break-out for the cello, conjuring up a dawn of unusual vitality.

Making another geographical leap, this time in memory of the late violinist-conductor Spiros Rantos, we were treated to a selection of five dances by Greek composer Nikos Skalkottas. The different dances were named for the varying regions of Greece they depicted, winding up with the lively Kleftikos (Dance of the Thieves) in which the entire ensemble participated.

The geographical-terpsichorean jaunting continued with works by another Australian female composer, Elena Kats-Chernin, Naive Waltz, composed for a dance work in Germany and Slicked Back Tango, written in admiration for the hairstyle of movie star Rudolph Valentino.

The chic conclusion to this afternoon of rather dancey music was a very famous composition by a pair of composers who knew more than a little about the art of dance – Johann and Joseph Strauss. Here the Musica da Camera instrumentalists forsook their bows and performed the Pizzicato Pola by plucking the strings, most of them with a grin on their faces.