After ten days of non-stop music-making, the Australian Festival of Chamber Music came to an end with a massive celebratory closing gala. By all accounts Artistic Director Kathryn Stott has outdone herself this year, with everyone I spoke to confirming that the program has topped her debut as director in 2018. There was plenty of buzz, too, about pipa virtuoso Wu Man, as well as the heroes of the festival, percussionist Robert Oetomo and violist Thomas Chawner, who both came on board last minute to replace injured musicians. Oetomo was a particular source of awe, somehow having memorised an incredible amount of music despite the short notice.

Robert Oetomo and Wu Man at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music. Photo © Andrew Rankin

The final concert is traditionally a sprawling, two-interval affair, which Stott took advantage of to give breathing room to several rarely played, large-scale works – Louis Vierne’s Piano Quintet and Joachim Raff’s Sinfonietta for Double Wind Quintet. But it was with a more intimate work that the concert opened, a single chime from offstage announcing the arrival, as the lights came up, of Man and Oetomo as...