The theme of this year’s Canberra International Music Festival is ‘The Child Within’.

“It is,” Artistic Director Roland Peelman writes, “an invitation to stop and wonder – or, for the mere duration of a song or symphony, to imagine the world anew, like a child.”

Tuesday night’s concert was perhaps the fullest embodiment of this evocation of childhood: chiefly a program of fairy tales and nursery rhymes – German and Czech; orchestrated and sung – featuring established performers and talented young musicians.

CIMF 2023. Of Fairies and Fools. Photo © Peter Hislop

The concert began with Robert Schumann’s Märchenerzählungen (Op. 132), an awe-inspiring German word that simply means ‘Stories from Fairy Tales’. It is a trio for viola (a pensive James Wannan), clarinet (the extroverted Oliver Schermacher), and piano (Peelman). Schumann thought that the compilation would “appear highly romantic”, his wife Clara noted.

The keynote is charm; the piece is as relaxed as idling in a boat on a golden summer afternoon; it has all the leisure of childhood. The third movement (in G major) is an especially lovely rêverie.