Warming to beauty and a beast of an instrument Latvian piano accordionist Ksenija Sidorova in Townsville. Picture: Evan Morgan Source: Townsville Bulletin WHEREVER Ksenija Sidorova goes, men fall under her spell, and it's not only because she is sensationally beautiful. It's the powerful way she uses the humble piano accordion to communicate the deepest emotions of the great composers. Latvian-born Sidorova, 25, is one of the fresh young faces at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville, north Queensland, who are bringing this once-rarefied form of music into the here and now. The festival, which opened on Friday and continues to August 3, features an impressive line-up of talented young musicians from Australia and overseas. There was a good sprinkling of young people among the predominantly grey-haired audience for the opening weekend's concerts. London-based Sidorova is one of a pioneering band of accordionists developing a new vision for the instrument as belonging on the concert platform. For Townsville, she will play adaptations of works by Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Britten and Dvorak to showcase the range and versatility of an instrument she describes as a one-man band. It's a cliche that the accordion is something you play when you are drunk or at a wedding. No serious repertoire was composed for the instrument until the 1960s when a switch was added to allow single notes to be played and it became a fully polyphonic instrument rather than just an oom-pah-pah squeeze box. "This is why serious contemporary composers are considering writing for this instrument and helping develop its new identity," Sidorova says. There are some really good players performing on big record labels so it's on the path to being perceived as a serious instrument. Sidorova recently recorded a CD with British boutique label Champs Hill that includes a new piece by Russian composer Artem Vassiliev and on August 7 she will give a world premiere in Riga of a work by Duncan Ward. Sidorova first played the accordion as a six-year-old on her summer holidays with her grandmother in Russia. At age 16 she auditioned for the Royal Academy in London and to her great surprise was accepted.