Music / Mozart’s Spring, Australian Haydn Ensemble. At Gandel Hall, National Gallery of Australia, March 12. Reviewed by ALANNA MACLEAN.

The Australian Haydn Ensemble took to the stage at the NGA’s Gandel Hall with a program  that offered a fine look at aspects of Haydn, Felix Mendelssohn and Mozart and the power of old instruments.

Artistic director Skye McIntosh gave some welcome spoken context to the three works on offer and a picture emerged of a time when much was happening in homes and houses soaked in music. Musicians such as Haydn, Mendelssohn and Mozart started young.

The first was Haydn’s String Quartet Op. 33 No 3 in C major The Bird, establishing that this would be an evening of the steady witty reassuring music of the late C18 and early C19 with a hint of some of the wilder stuff that would follow as Romanticism took over.

This was followed by Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in E flat major MWV R 18. He was only 14 when he wrote this, but you could hear hints of the powerful melodies that his later work would unleash in the splendid playing of the quartet.

After interval, the players took to Mozart at 28 with his lovely String Quartet No 14 in G major K 387 Spring. A certain fun was had here with an awareness that the first violin is not always the logical star and that the other instruments have voices, too. This was a grand finish to a thoroughly absorbing concert.

And fascinating throughout was the age of some the instruments being played. The violins from 1770 and 1760 and a cello from 1781 (with a ring in viola from 2010) had a warmer more muted sound than you might expect from more modern instruments. But a twenty first century viola can be built to older standards and gut strings are probably part of the secret.

The grand Gandel Hall makes for good listening but frankly lacks a decent lighting set up and a section of the audience were contending with light in the eyes. However, the muted visuals of a backlit black clad quartet did suggest the candlelight of original performance.

An excellent and instructive evening of Haydn, Mendelssohn and Mozart.