Cygnus Arioso play Bach and Bartok at Perth Concert Hall

When COVID curbs took away one half of her audience, Akiko Miyazawa threw up her arms like the kid in the taco ad and said: “Why can’t we have both?”

At least that was the effect, with the Sunday matinee of Cygnus Arioso’s Bach and Bartok program doubling up at 2pm and 4pm to cater for a bigger crowd at Perth Concert Hall.

“I’m starting to wonder if I’m particularly attractive to coronavirus restrictions,” Miyazawa said, after a year of programs delayed and modified by repeated lockdowns.

She launched with rising star Emily Leung into Bach’s Double Concerto for 2 Violins, a delicacy in their playing modelling the mood of cautious hope.

Sweetly resonant strings were the perfect accompaniment to Leung’s agile lead in the Allegro opening, matched in mellow reflection by Miyazawa.

Flurries of sound filled the hall, pausing briefly in a gentle cadence before the Adagio middle stanza.

Sweeping phrases unhurried by time inspired a reverie, the ensemble dancing attendance on the soloists with richly sonorous chords to eke out an aching sense of longing.

All were playing in every sense, though never losing the transcendent quality of the Baroque; the closing a poignant, solemn moment.

Suddenly the Allegro finale burst out in urgent energy.

Eighteenth century philosophers thought a watch the perfect analogy to explain God and creation — there had to be a watchmaker.

Here, Bach was the maker and the musicians the springs and cogs, never missing a beat as waves of harmony and melody ebbed and flowed in timeless manner.

Leung and Miyazawa were borne along yet also drove with verve and artistic elan; the cadence again poignant, closing all-too soon.

Their duet was an apt metaphor for Cygnus Arioso’s broader mission to partner up-and-coming musicians with established professionals, a theme developed in Bartok’s Divertimento for Strings.

Bartok’s 20th century ambience was dramatically different; the same Allegro-Adagio-Allegro format, and the same working parts — minus Stewart Smith’s harpsichord — evoking a world apart from Bach’s seemingly simple aesthetic.

Dynamic composition worked the voices within the ensemble in call and response, combining and separating by turn; a viola-violin duet of Kathy Potter and Miyazawa injecting a brief quietus before diving back into drama.

The palette changed constantly, from complex chords across the whole ensemble, to bouts of sparse orchestration like sunlight through the canopy of a forest.

Molto Adagio introduced mystery in cello and bass leading ethereal lines in violin and viola, fading then reviving in strident bowing, then fading again; sudden mood swings like cinematic episodes deftly navigated across the group.

Energy returned in the Allegro assai finale, with drama renewed in octaves, breaking back to more complex harmonies, then thinning out to a sonorous solo violin.

In an age of masked musicians, eye contact across the arc of the ensemble was more than ever vital as angular phrases cut in, sections leading then following, instant crescendo and distant echo giving way to pizzicato dance and scherzo-like conclusion.

Leung’s setting of Elgar’s Salut d’amour was the encore, violins leading delicately with warmth and emotion in a soothing piece of ear candy to complete the feast.