Canberra International Music Festival should be commended for yesterday’s tribute to living composers.

The ‘Bells and Smells’ concert, held across four venues: NGA Sculpture Garden, The High Court, National Carillon and National Portrait Gallery, featured works by eight contemporary composers, including two World Premieres.

On the banks of the lake, accompanied by rustling autumn winds, Tambucco Percussion (Mexico) and the Festival Handbell Ensemble performed bell pieces by Judith Clingan, Elena Kats-Chernin, Jessica Wells, Larry Sitsky and Lyn Fuller.

Carillonists Anna Wong and Lyn Fuller joined the ensemble from across the water at the National Carillon. Occasional balance issues presented in the combination of carillon and bells. Accompanying figures in handbells often drowned out the more intricate carillon lines, their overtones altered and softened by travelling over water. But the atmosphere was beautiful – we sat in late autumn sun as clear tones produced by the combined bell ensemble drifted out over the lake.

Moving to the High Court, I was slightly disappointed to find pianist Aaron Chew’s fine performance of Anne Boyd’s ‘Book of the Bells’ already well underway as the audience clattered in. Admittedly it was nice to arrive in music rather than silence, but I’d have preferred to hear the performance from start to finish – without the unwelcome accompaniment of scraping chairs.

The magnificent acoustic of the High Court highlighted a wonderful performance of Composer in Residence Gerard Brophy’s Kaleghat Votives for saxophone and string quartet – the world premiere of his new version. Kaleghat Votives is an elegant work of asiatic scales and shifting planes of sound reminiscent of Ligetti’s late orchestrations. Its wide timbral palette references Indian sitar music and the bowed strings of central Asia – Erhu perhaps – with drones and ornaments. Its harmonic impetus is derived from the subtle inner movement of passing tones and formal, almost classical cadences.

Roland Peelman’s nuanced and expressive conducting carried a colour-rich quartet, while Christina Leonard stunned the audience with her exquisite tone production on Soprano saxophone.

Bells and Smells concluded at the Portrait Gallery with the world premiere performance of Tristan Coelho’s Smell of the Earth, commissioned for the festival by Tambuco Percussion.

This intriguing work, of bowed flowerpots and struck recumbent bottles, paid poetic tribute to the products of earth – glass, clay, metal and china. Losing a little momentum in a lengthy unpitched middle section, Coelho’s work opened out onto a stunning Harry Partch inspired garden of additive rhythms and clustered peals like those of far cathedrals. It was great to hear such an innovative and contemporary program and I hope future music festivals continue in this vein.