While hardly the last concert of the Festival, ‘Last Statement’ on Wednesday night at the Canberra International Music Festival was still an evening of farewells. The first goodbye took place before the audience even arrived – the soprano for the opening performance was originally to be award-winning Australian-Chinese artist, Shu-Cheen Yu. But as the Festival’s Artistic Director, Roland Peelman, put it ruefully to the audience, these crisp Canberra nights take their toll. For a professional singer with a full schedule, it is better not to risk straining an indisposed throat, and so Yu regretfully chose not to make an appearance. Fortunately for all, Susannah Lawergren, at the Festival with The Song Company, boldly stepped up at the last moment to fill this gap. Schubert’s last statement would still be made.

Well, perhaps not his very last. Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (The Shepherd on the Rock) was, however, composed in the final months of Schubert’s life. A stunning and virtuosic lied for clarinet and soprano, it presents the song of a lonely shepherd as he thinks about his distant lover. Peelman extracted a gently pulsing introduction from the piano as Israeli clarinettist Orit Orbach inhaled for her first, long, sweet...