It’s not often you come out of a chamber music concert whistling Glenn Miller’s wartime hit, A String of Pearls. But then again the four Frenchmen who make up the Debussy Quartet are no run-of-the-mill group.

Formed 27 years ago in Lyons, where they were all students, violinists Christophe Collette and Marc Vieillefon, violist Vincent Deprecq and cellist Cédric Conchon have established themselves as one of the most hard-working string quartets around, touring the world and building up an impressive discography which includes albums for children alongside the complete Shostakovich set.

Neither are they conventional in their performance habits, working with acrobats from the Queensland company Circa, trailblazing new French music and democratically swapping lead violin duties.

For their Australian programme they played from memory – no music stands to act as a barrier between musicians and audience. They started on their feet with the Elegy section of Shostakovich’s Two Pieces, adapted from his ballet The Golden Age, which ran foul of the Stalinist regime for featuring an arrangement of the “decadent” Tea For Two.

The beautiful slow movement immediately pinpointed the Debussys’ seamless ensemble work and beautiful tone, Conchon’s mellow but meaty cello a feature.

The group, with Collette leading, remained standing for...