Civic Theatre, Townsville
July 31, 2016

There’s a strong smell of the celebratory in the Townsville air for this year 25th anniversary of Australia’s biggest annual chamber music bash. It’s the indefatigable General Manager Sue Hackett’s last year and Artistic Director Piers Lane seems determined to play her out in style by assembling the most extraordinarily impressive line up of musicians from home and abroad. Flicking through the nine-day programme and  looking at the diverse ensembles put together on the stage on opening night, all I could think was, “bloody hell, that’s Michael Collins, there’s Jack Liebeck, and there’s Amy Dickson,” not to mention the likes of oboist Nicholas Daniel who chatted to me over an interval drink and Polish pianist Piotr Andersewski who’s on tomorrow night. The list of biogs is a veritable who’s who of Australian classical music royalty from Dene Olding to Li-Wei Qin; from William Barton to Eugene Ughetti.

The opening concert was a perfect tasting plate of things to come. Opening with Mendelssohn’s amiable Sextet, one of those sunny chamber works across whose face no cloud is permitted to pass, it received a thoroughly charming reading from Jack Liebeck on violin, Hartmut Rohde and David Harding...