Outside, Circular Quay was swarming with holiday crowds and colourfully clad people drumming and celebrating an Indian festival, while inside the Opera House’s Utzon Room the clocks seemed to be standing still when the Omega Ensemble played one of the most popular and extraordinary chamber works of the 20th Century, Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time.

The piece – performed by David Rowden (clarinet), Alexandra Osborne (violin), Paul Stender (cello) and Vatche Jambazian (piano) – was the cherry on the cake of an imaginative program in which the three works fitted together like a well-worn glove.

Omega Ensemble cellist Paul Stender. Photo © Keith Saunders.

For the second time this season the Omega Ensemble gave a world premiere of a work they had commissioned. In February it was William Barton’s Gift – Our Breath of Life and this time they featured a work by another Aboriginal composer, Yorta Yorta Dja Dja Wurrung woman Dr Lou Bennett’s nyerrnur, nyarkur – to hear, to see in which the four musicians play over a soundtrack of birdsong with Bennett’s recorded voice singing the lines in...