You cannot say that NAFA is not, if anything, adventurous. Of course, the selection of music played is largely subjective and rests on the performers and organizers. As the eponymous title suggests, this was an evening anchored by Mendelssohn, and "filled out" by Bach and Wang Cheng Quan - the latter a world premiere, no less.

The inclusion of Bach's Second Partita was a welcome choice indeed. Bach, upon the publication of his Partitas in the Clavierübung (clavier exercise), gave it the distinction of being his opus number one, which tells us the regard that the great master himself must have had for this music. Bach's biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel wrote of the Partitas:

This composition caused a stir in the world of music in its day; never before had one seen and heard such excellent clavier compositions. Those who learnt to perform a few of them quite well could make their fortune in the world; and even in our day young artists will still be able to gain acclaim with them, brilliant, melodious, expressive and ever new as they are.

Taking to the stage solo for the first half, Ms Lin played the Bach with much aplomb, clearly relishing the various plummeting runs, syncopations and multi-part writing. The fugal middle section of the Sinfonia and the Rondeaux, for instance, was excellently articulated with the two-part and three-part voices coming through very clearly. The Allemande was sculpted with a beautiful legato and phrasing, as compared to the Sarabande which had the requisite formally-measured tempo.

Overall, Ms Lin had a clear sense of where she was going with the music. Unfortunately, she omitted the repeats, which, in the case of Bach, does alter the architecture of the music. Dynamics and ornamentations were for the most part ignored. Playing Bach is always a balancing act: not every performer can bring everything - phrasing, embellishments, tempi, technical security - into one successful package, but in dispatching this challenging work, Ms Lin emerges largely unscathed.

Popularized in its day by no less a personage than Clara Schumann, four of Mendelssohn's pianistic Songs Without Words followed. The well-known Op.19 No.3 "Hunting Song" was approached with much barnstorming, with a clear high-wire, risk-taking quality to it. Perhaps this was why it ended up sounding more strenuous, like a storm-in-a-teacup, than it ought to have.

Even in Op.19 No.1, a more benign touch would have helped, rather than a vigorous approach to Mendelssohn (right), albeit the rippling left-hand semiquavers flowed delightfully. The Op.67 No.2 found some very nice phrasing of motifs. Again, as in the Bach, Ms Lin demonstrated an uncanny ability to play and articulate in two separate voices - distinct in their own voices, yet melifluously intertwined - especially in the Op.38 No.6 "Duetto". The tempo was rather brisk, even for Andante con moto .

The Andante and Rondo Capriccioso was even better. In Ms Lin's capable hands, the opening was intelligently characterized by a nice, contemplative rubato, and followed by a number of intriguing ornaments. While the Rondo Capriccioso wasn't as "gossamer" as the one might associate with Mendelssohn (as the programme "...notes suggest), articulations were implacably sustained rather than lightly tossed: this really needs a defter touch. Even so, Ms Lin demonstrated a clear sense of the classico-romantic idiom and her playing was certainly more than adequate.

Ms Lin was joined by Ma Jun Yi on violin and Leah Jennings on cello for the second half. Both string players are members of the Sydney Symphony with comparable chamber music experience. Playing with impeccable tone, Ms Lin appeared more than comfortable working with them. Wang Cheng Quan's Piano Trio The Peony also received its world premiere immediately after the interval, a work in one singular movement with three sections. (Or three movements without a break - one can only guess as the programme book's listings did not include individual movements.)

I have to confess, looking through Wang's many laudatory titles and academic appointments as a composer in the programme book's biography, I was afraid that there would be much ado about nothing. My fears, as it turned out, were not entirely unfounded. The Peony, as anyone familiar with contemporary Chinese music might be able to anticipate, was entirely rooted in the pentatonic idiom.

The opening section was a formal, slow affair, with some musical development before a faster section followed - unfortunately, here the programme notes did not really elaborate on the music beyond describing it as "Peony's elegant and lively character". Much of it was abstract working-out of thematic material, and a tendency for the written violin part to dominate the proceedings.

The slow section, depicting the "wounded Fairy Peony in tragedy and how it (sic) stands firm and unyielding in hardship", lacked any sense of pathos, with the piano relegated to banality as the violin and the cello exchanged the material. Often, one instrument would carry the theme with the other two "filling out" the rhythm and harmonic parts.

Also, the cello had a tendency to be drowned out by the other two timbres - a technical issue which composers writing for cello should be acutely aware of. It became clear halfway through that The Peony was pretty much an orthodox Chinese composition for three Western instruments, and not a Sino-Occidental fusion as might be found in the likes of Bright Sheng or Chen Yi.

As for the performers, the melodic line for the violin was most sensitively rendered by Ma. Ms Jennings, on the other hand, supported her colleagues well but, as mentioned above, often had to struggle against a density of violin and piano timbres. The piano did not receive much of the share of music, either, but Ms Lin nonetheless performed crisply when she had to.

Perhaps one's disappointment with The Peony comes from having a different expectation. After all, it was the solitary non-Western work in a clearly orthodox classical programme; a more imaginative tonal palette and a wider range of emotional inflexions for the players to work with would have helped immeasurably. As it is, The Peony's connection with the Songs Without Words sobriquet of the evening remains at best eccentric.

Mendelssohn's First Piano Trio closed the programme. The trio of players were noticeably more at ease in this idiom. The slow movement saw some very lush solo violin passages. The cellist's tone was equally attuned to the elegance of Mendelssohn's music, and by the third movement, the musicians finally revealed some hints of "gossamer" writing reminiscent of the Mendelssohnian Midsummer. Ms Lin reclaimed a share of the music with great authority in the finale, providing a tempestous impulse that drove the music forward with much excitement.

The evening's crowd was (strangely) very well-behaved - I'm not sure how many of them were (to belabour the obvious) students, invited guests, and general members of the public genuinely here for the love of the music. More tellingly, they did not clap between movements, something which has happened to SSO audiences in recent concerts, and I sense this was more out of conservativeness and waiting for someone else to take the lead.

But the main reason I'm curious about the audience composition was audience members who started talking to each other, even if it was in short, controlled whispers, during the Mendelssohn Trio, out of sheer restlessness. In short, this was a fairly polite and reserved crowd, with an attention span one might find of unseasoned concert-goers.

I for one am glad that NAFA has done a good job in putting up these chamber concerts, even as part of its Arts Festival (which has not received as much attention from other media as much as it deserves.) Wang's premiere was interesting but ultimately, I'd expected something less... pentatonic. The programme book also needs closer proofreading to avoid clangers such as references to Bach's Calvierübung [sic] , not to mention awkward sentence structures and imbalanced programme notes (one paragraph only for the Mendelssohn Piano Trio !) Otherwise, all in all, a satisfactory evening out.

BENJAMIN CHEE received a set of the complete Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words for a wedding present.

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