The Omega Ensemble’s first performance at City Recital Hall for the year, an all-Mozart affair, put the ensemble’s winds in the spotlight, bordered as it was by the K.452 Quintet for Piano and Winds in E Flat Major at one end and the Serenade in B Flat Major, Gran Partita, K.361, at the other. A fitting program, therefore, to debut Omega’s newest principal musician, oboist Celia Craig (recently of Adelaide Symphony Orchestra fame), whose penetrating, burnished tone wove through this concert like a gleaming thread.

The Omega Ensemble in Grand Mozart. Photo: supplied

Craig’s sound was an ever-present force in the declarative chords of the Quintet’s introductory Largo, her lines beautifully shaped amongst the lyrical solos that followed from each of the winds. At the heart of this work is the piano – which would have originally been played by Mozart himself – dispatched here with panache by Maria Raspopova, who drove the first movement’s Allegro moderato forward, despite what felt like some slight resistance from the quartet of winds. There were some deftly matched trills between piano and winds in the Larghetto, and while entries were precise and intonation immaculate,...