SSO musos throw a house-warming party at the Opera House

With the SSO on the verge of returning to its refurbished home at the Opera House, the popular intimate Cocktail Hour series is back at the Utzon Room

Sisters Fiona and Leone Ziegler were among the SSO musicians performing in the Cocktail Hour concert.

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With the Sydney Symphony Orchestra on the verge of returning to its newly-refurbished home at the Opera House, the popular intimate Cocktail Hour series is back at the Utzon Room after a two-and-a-half year lay-off.

To mark the occasion nine of the orchestra’s musicians performed a pair of joyous chamber works by Beethoven and Mozart while happy subscribers sipped on a complimentary glass of wine and looked out over the evening harbour through the wall-long glass window.

First up the twin horns of Euan Harvey and Marnie Sebire led a string quartet for Beethoven’s Sextet in E major Op 81b. As ABC Classics FM presenter and harpist Genevieve Lang explained little is known about this work, which was probably composed in 1795 when the composer was in his mid-20s.

The string quartet – Marnie Marsden and Emily Long, violins, Justine Marsden, viola, and Adrian Wallis, cello – play an elegant and restrained Mozartean role throughout the work while the horns run the show with some wild leaping fanfares in the outer movements and a lovely duet in the slow middle movement.

Harvey and Sebire were on point with excellent intonation and some impressive virtuosity.

Lang explained that the SSO musicians are asked to select works and who they play with for the Cocktail Hour and the second piece on the program, Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, was chosen by the Gagliano Quartet players led by violinist sisters Fiona and Leone Ziegler, although clarinetist Francesco Celata did admit it was his desert island disc.

This was a nicely nuanced performance with Mozart’s heavenly tunes given their full due. The return of the main theme in the Larghetto second movement was gorgeously hushed and Jane Hazlewood’s viola and Wallis’s cello underpinned the Ziegler sisters beautifully in the Trios of the third movement.

This was a splendid evening of music-making, punctuated only occasionally by a falling wine glass, and marked a welcome return of the orchestra to its rightful home.

DETAILS

• CONCERT Sydney Symphony Orchestra Cocktail Hour

• WHERE Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House

• WHEN Friday, June 24