In these days of jaded palates, programming counts, and anyone wanting to make some new musical companions while watching an old friend or two get a makeover need look no further than the enterprising Sydney-based Omega ensemble. Not that everything made sense – the connections that the bookends to this enjoyable concert had to the three central works still eludes me – but when the intrigue-factor is this high, I can’t say I cared overmuch.

Mozart’s Fantasia in F Minor, a late work originally conceived for a clockwork organ (to what, one might ask, might the greats be reduced in order to make ends meet), made an attractive opener. Essentially scored for wind quintet, string quartet and piano fill in, it points the way forward, if not exactly to Beethoven, very possibly to Schubert. Although its dark textures occasionally thickened, the Omegas gave its multiple-sections sufficient room to breathe.

Adelaide-born composer Mark Grandison’s Riffraction was one of two engaging newish sextets on the bill. Inhabiting a post-minimalist sound word, syncopated figurations in strings and piano proffered a shape-shifting bed of sound on which David Rowden’s solo clarinet was able to lay its riffs and jazzy licks. A cheerful, though tricksy piece,...