The Australian Festival of Chamber Music’s Artistic Director Kathryn Stott might have retired the Festival’s Bach by Candlelight concerts, but Thursday evening was still devoted to the music of the baroque period – just with a few different composers sharing the spotlight. Thus the first concert of the evening, Baroque Around the Clock, was a smartly programmed conversation between baroque and 20th-century music, with modern explorations of Baroque ideas and forms presented alongside earlier examples.

Lotte Betts-Dean and Ruth Wall at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music. Photo © Andrew Rankin

Mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean opened proceedings with John Dowland’s lute song Flow, my tears, with Ruth Wall’s harp standing in for the lute. Betts-Dean’s tone was pure, only lightly coloured by vibrato in the early verses, before blossoming in the third. Her diction was immaculate, and she gave a chilling edge to “Hark! You shadows that in darkness dwell” that bordered on a hiss. The Dowland was cleverly paired with Thomas Adès’ 1992 piano work Darknesse Visible – which the composer described as “an explosion” of Dowland’s In Darknesse Let Mee Dwell – given a detailed, mesmerising reading here by Aura Go. With stabbing...