Now in its fourth year, the five-day Bendigo Chamber Music Festival has established itself as an important date on the chamber music calendar.

Drawing on overseas and top-shelf local talent, drawn from both the Melbourne and Sydney Symphony Orchestras as well as younger players from the Australian National Academy of Music, Co-Directors and cellists Chris Howlett and Howard Penny have created a lively and interesting mixture of new and old repertoire, familiar and unfamiliar, in several venues throughout the historic Victorian town.

And for those unable to make it to the concerts, most of them are available as streams for subscribers to Australian Digital Concert Hall, of which Howlett is also Co-Director.

The festival got under way on Thursday, 1 February, with an Opening Gala concert at the Capital Theatre.

The Capitol Theatre, Bendigo. Photo supplied.

Louis Spohr’s Fantasia and Variations on a Theme of Danzi, Op 81, for clarinet and string quartet – in this case a dozen string players – made for a delightful and lively curtain raiser to the festival with its challenging virtuosic clarinet runs and elegant lilt which shows the early Romantic German composer’s extensive study of...