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So impressive, this concert could just as easily have been staged in London's Wigmore Hall instead of this quaint old Agriculture and Industry building, only a stone's throw from Byron Street, with its original metal pressed ceiling and walls that decades ago confined cattle, pigs and sheep.

In the same concert was Here When Life and Death, a song cycle by Richard Mills written as a tribute to the iconic Queensland poet Judith Wright. Mills told the audience that her poetry has 'luminously enshrined the Australian bush'. Soprano Margaret Schindler sang with immense power and a lovely tone even if the words were not always clear. The very showy piano part was hard to contain given the Stuart's robust sound, but, associate artist Philip Mayers played the virtuosic accompaniment sensitively and with commendable technical control.

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