The Canberra International Music Festival is famous for its collaboration concerts, bringing together solo musicians and ensembles with their own profiles in the festival program for events that show what they can do together.

Under a loose theme of ‘folk and tango’, classical accordion player and experienced musical director James Crabb anchors a diverse program alongside clarinettist David Griffiths which has toured traditional musical forms from Czechia, Scotland, Serbia, Russia, Argentina and Hungary.

Folk & Tango. Photo © Peter Hislop

Opening with Antonin Dvořák’s Bagatelles Op. 47, one has to remind oneself that the accordion is not an everyday inclusion in a string quartet. So subtle and sympathetic is Crabb’s contribution among Australian String Quartet players that these rustic dance tunes sounds completely true to form, the accordion providing the colourful hint of Bohemian character.

Elena Kats-Chernin’s Russian Rag, known best as the ABC’s Late Night Live theme tune for some years under Phillip Adams, is played in a restrained, lilting tempo, giving instruments plenty of space to speak, with Griffiths relishing the lead clarinet role.

Audiences might still be divided on how...