Love was the theme of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music’s eighth day, with Love Letters the final concert of the evening, following earlier concerts Relative Love and Love Stories (which featured a wonderful performance of Sally Beamish’s Four Songs from Hafez by baritone Roderick Williams and pianist Daniel de Borah).

Berlin-based Australian soprano Siobhan Stagg – who has a run of gigs here following the festival, including engagements with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and singing Melisande in Victorian Opera’s upcoming Pelleas and Melisande – sent off the first love letters, with an exquisite performance of Fauré’s La bonne chanson in the composer’s arrangement for chamber ensemble.

The chamber version – which saw violinists Harry Bennetts and Alexander Sitkovetsky, violist Lars Anders Tomter, cellist István Várdai, double bassist Kees Boersma and De Borah join Stagg on stage – offers lusher textures than the piano version, with Stagg’s sound ensconced in the larger ensemble.

Fauré wrote the work for his mistress Emma Bardac, cherry-picking poems from Verlaine’s La bonne chanson and reordering them to create a structure that follows a narrative of blossoming love. Stagg’s sound was sweet and ethereal in the opening Une Sainte en son aureole – the viola mimicking...