Sydney City Youth Ballet with the SYO Philharmonic. The Concourse, Chatswood, Sydney. September 23.

The room is always full of hope and desire when student performers take to the stage, particularly if they are dancers or classical musicians.

Some will have started as young as four or five and certainly by eight or nine. In their early teens they are upping the number of classes they take each week. If they survive the rigours of intense practice and the personal sacrifices required by these all-consuming arts, their late teens see them negotiating the transition from L-plates to a professional career.

Getting in front of an audience is part of the process, hence all those competitions and eisteddfods, but there’s nothing like a proper concert to get the juices flowing for the performers and for those out front. Who doesn’t like getting in on the ground floor of someone’s brilliant career?

Student dance concerts are almost always staged to the unyielding backdrop of recorded music for understandable economic reasons but the lack of living, breathing, energising music is felt. The inaugural collaboration between Sydney City Youth Ballet and the SYO Philharmonia – Sydney Youth Orchestras’ second-most senior orchestra – was therefore an occasion to cheer and with luck it won’t be a one-off.

The Together Live 2017 program was ambitious, featuring two substantial new works, two orchestral numbers and an appearance by guest artists from Queensland Ballet alongside three classical showcases.

Arranged at the back of the stage, the SYO Philharmonic opened with the third movement of Prokofiev’s Symphony No.1 in D Major “Classical”, with Wim Broeckx’s new work Classical Symphony, arranged to Prokofiev, following.

Broeckx made attractive use of a six-member corps of women, whose entrances, exits and graceful patterns formed an ever-changing backdrop to a series of solos and pas de deux for leading men and women. Alexander Smith, 17, formerly with Sydney’s Tanya Pearson Academy and currently studying in Stuttgart, was a little tested by the fast tempo set by conductor Brian Buggy but showed swift, clean beaten steps.

The other premiere was a two-part contemporary piece by Adam Blanch that took the not-unfamiliar theme of environmental degradation and a collapsing society. An atmosphere of unease was well sustained by the choice of music. Blanch used an electronic score by Seymour Milton for part one, Redemption, following with Peter Sculthorpe’s Earth Cry for the second part, The Sky is Falling, in which the SYO Philharmonic had a big success. After a beginning that was perhaps a little too literal in its depiction of isolation, a large group prowled, gathered, dissipated and reformed, each member ferociously committed to the work.

In between those two works there was the chance to see 18-year-old Cameron Holmes tackle the Le Corsaire pas de deux with apparently serene and absolutely justified confidence. Not once but twice he threw in a clean, high-flying 540, that highly acrobatic aerial move borrowed from martial arts that all the men have co-opted these days, or at least those who appear in splashy party pieces such as this. His partner, Audrey Freeman, had poise and maturity well beyond her years. She is only 14 but also emanated sophisticated mystery in Redemption, as did Aaron Matheson.

In the Les Sylphides pas de deux Janae Kerr, 16, captured the poetic perfume of Mikhail Fokine’s choreography, seen in floaty balances and a melting backbend over her partner Smith’s shoulder.

The glamour quotient was sky-high in the grand pas deux from The Nutcracker in Ben Stevenson’s version, danced by Queensland Ballet and here performed by QB’s Mia Heathcote and Joel Woellner. I’ve seen Stevenson’s production several times in Brisbane but hadn’t registered just how sensual the woman’s choreography is. Heathcote looked divine, luxuriously swaying her spine and curving her neck this way without losing a sense of classical style. Woellner is a strong, fine dancer who at this matinee wasn’t entirely on form. As always he partnered well.

SCYB artistic director Lucinda Dunn suggested in her program note that Together Live 2017 might be only the beginning of the partnership with the SYO. Certainly the name hints at future collaborations and they’d be most welcome.

SYCB is associated with Tanya Pearson Classical Coaching Academy and the acadamy’s general manager, Nicole Sharp, says she and Dunn had long discussed wanting SYCB to perform with an orchestra. Money, as always, was the issue.

The situation changed when a student’s grandfather dropped by Sharp’s office to have a chat. It was Brian Buggy, who has conducted the SYO Philharmonic since 2007. After much discussion with Buggy and SYO chief executive Yarmila Alfonzetti about music and repertoire, the deal was done.

The SYO Philharmonic – a full symphony orchestra with members ranging in age from 12 to 24 – gave a fearless reading of the Prelude of Act II of Wagner’s Lohengrin, which gives the whole orchestra a bracing workout in about three speedy minutes. The brass and winds were particularly effective – the brass terrific in the Sculthorpe too – but there were strong contributions from all sections.