This year’s Bowral Autumn Music Festival comprised a total of eight concerts. The stars of the four concerts I attended, and probably of the entire festival, were the four members of the Acacia String Quartet who began matters with an excellent account of Haydn’s Quartet in G, Op. 77 No 1, displaying great musicality, a fine tone and a degree of unanimity in the slow movement that is unusual in string quartet playing. The same was true of their performance, together with David Griffiths, of Mozart’s Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, K581. It was no service to Ross Edwards, however, to place his brief Yananda for solo clarinet between two great masterpieces of chamber music.

The concert on the Friday night featured four singers, Jane Sheldon, soprano, Anna Fraser, soprano, Andrew Goodwin, tenor, and David Greco, baritone, with pianists Sira Battaglin and Phillip Shovk.  After the interval, by which time their voices had warmed up, the singers gave an enthusiastic and enjoyable performance of Brahms’s Liebeslieder Waltzes Op. 52. Here the singers displayed great skill negotiating the tricky vocal writing and also brought out the unexpected humour in these pieces. Earlier in the programme, in interesting songs by...