Composer Elena Kats-Chernin was flown in for the Festival Farewell.

After nine days of music-making at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, the final concert typically has a carnival atmosphere, the stage full of performers and the repertoire festive – and this year’s sold-out Festival Farewell was no different.

The concert opened with German husband-and-wife team violinist Indira Koch and cellist Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt performing Norwegian composer Johan Halvorsen’s Passacaglia in G Minor on a Theme by George Frideric Handel, before baritone Roderick Williams joined the Goldner Quartet on stage for a set of Mendelssohn songs. The concert really caught fire, however, with pianists Piers Lane and Finghin Collins facing off across two pianos for Dave Brubeck’s bluesy ballet suite Points on Jazz, which prompted laughter and excited applause after several of the movements.

The audience was given the mysterious instruction to remain in their seats at the end of the concert’s first half. Flown in especially for the concert was Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin, whose Three Dancers was commissioned for the festival’s 25th anniversary last year. In celebration of Lane’s tenth anniversary as Artistic Director of the Festival this year, the organisers had a surprise for him – a new...