Mothers of all ages were greeted at the grand GHD Auditorium for the second Sundays by the Lake concert with a smile and a chrysanthemum, which hinted at one of the featured pieces – Puccini’s famous Crisantemi (Chrysanthemums), the traditional flower of mourning in Italy.

Rather than a celebration of mothers and their ability to create life, the theme leaned heavily towards death, with Le Brocq’s poignant story, the elegiac Crisantemi and Autumn Has Come, one of seven of Michael Leunig’s Curly Pyjama Letters.

Ensemble Q at the GHD Auditorium, University of Queensland. Photo supplied

The world premiere performance of Sonam and the Silence was accompanied by strings and clarinet in Cawrse’s jazzy style, with the descriptive music swelling and lulling alongside the narrative. Le Brocq’s husky tones and measured narration told the tale of Sonam, a small girl living in Kabul who discovers the joy of music during a strict Taliban music ban. She follows lilting sounds coming from within a walled garden to find an old man playing a rubab, a lute-like instrument from Afghanistan, and is instantly spellbound.

Unfortunately, some of the more emotive music drowned out the narration, making parts of the tale difficult to follow. What I did hear was written with delicate lyricism born of a love for music, influenced by the composer teaching music in Afghanistan for a year. The takeaway from the children’s story applies to us all: you can hear music in everything if you listen with your heart.

Puccini’s Crisantemi dripped with heartfelt, mournful pathos, written in anguish in a single night in 1890 as an elegy for the sudden death of the composer’s friend, Prince Amadeo di Savoia. Guest violist Roger Benedict, an ARIA-nominated Associate Professor at the Sydney Conservatorium, shone in his inaugural appearance with Ensemble Q. His steady, melancholic viola and Co-Artistic Director Trish Dean’s cello were sombre, while Adam Chalabi and Anne Horton’s violins screamed and soared sorrowfully.

An excerpt from Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig’s Curly Pyjama Letters followed, accompanied by music from his close friend Calvin Bowman, commissioned by the Flinders Quartet in 2011. Each of the seven brief letters between the two friends – Mr Curly of Curly Flat and the lone voyager Vasco Pyjama – was whimsical and often poignant, narrated lovingly by Le Brocq.

Ed le Brocq and Ensemble Q at the GHD Auditorium, University of Queensland. Photo supplied

Chalabi’s gorgeous, sweet violin solo in Life is a Miracle was divine, but my favourite was the challenging tongue twister Friends Like Fronds, performed in the style of Noël Coward and handled masterfully by the ABC presenter. The soft Autumn Has Come touched again on death, with its small bird grave and reflections on the autumnal senescence of nature.

The magnificent Mozart Clarinet Quintet – one of my favourites – provided the lightness and frivolity the concert needed, with the only pressure resting heavily on Co-Artistic Director Paul Dean, whose former clarinet teacher Floyd was sitting in the front row. Dean, forever the showman, exclaimed to the audience that if they didn’t like his clarinet playing, they could blame Floyd.

Paukl Dean at the GHD Auditorium, University of Queensland. Photo supplied

No such admonishments were needed, as Dean was terrific. He cuckooed through the arpeggios and bubbled up and down the fiendishly difficult fingerwork, bowing back and forth in his seat with the tempo. The strings swayed as if waltzing at a tea dance, while Benedict’s viola parroted the violins.

Dean’s unique crème-brûlée sound was delivered with the dexterity of a great jazz musician and the showmanship of Barnum, ending with a mentor-directed kiss. It was a vivifying conclusion to a mixed bag of a Mozart for Mums Mother’s Day celebration, which ultimately needed more life-giving Mozart and less mortality.