At a prestigious chamber music festival such as the AFCM, there’s an expectation that the performances will be highly informed and skilful. Yet this concert ventured into such emotionally charged territory that the audience was stunned.

There were no throwaway moments offering the chance for thoughts to drift because the musical offering was compelling from the first piece to the last.

Those who were there can’t stop talking about it.

Classical composers do melancholic introspection very well, and it was easy to embrace the nostalgic works in this program of contemplative, moonlit fantasy.

Twilight’s Embrace: Kristian Chong and Julian Smiles. Photo © Paul Furse

Australian composer Margaret Sutherland’s dream of becoming a composer was hindered by her husband, a psychiatrist, who believed that if a woman wanted to create music, it indicated a mental disorder. How gratifying, then, to hear violinist Alexandra Raikhlina and pianist Kristian Chong’s insightful, tender reading of Sutherland’s impressionistic Nocturne for Violin and Piano, which she wrote in 1944.

Composed in 1965, Lennox Berkeley’s Songs of the Half-Light sets five poems by Walter de la Mare. Robin Tritschler’s...