Tai Murray, violin, and Bridget Kibbey, harp, perform at the Portland Chamber Music Festival’s “Homecoming” on Thursday. Photo courtesy of Portland Chamber Music Festival

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like Hannaford Hall in August. Especially, this year.

On Thursday night, the Portland Chamber Music Festival returned for an evening of in-person performances that, before last year’s pandemic induced a move to online concerts, had long filled the ears of live audiences at its home base on the University of Southern Maine campus.

A masked crowd of a few hundred Thursday night got to experience the festival’s “Homecoming” through a mostly light, sometimes playful, and even occasionally giddy performance of music representing centuries of composing for soloists and small groups of classically trained musicians.

Talented (unmasked) artists from near and far took to the wood-paneled stage to perform eight works. Duos figured prominently, but a set of solos for guitar, a trio and a quintet also served well to fill out the nearly 90-minute program.

The evening began with the “Elegiac Trio for Flute, Viola and Harp” (1916) by Arnold Bax. A memorial to the then-recent and quite violent Easter Uprising in Ireland, the work nonetheless favors an impressionistic subtlety over any forcefulness. Alex Sopp (flute), Melissa Reardon (viola) and Bridget Kibbey (harp) seemed intent on establishing a bit more of a forthright quality, though, to the work’s reflection on a beautiful world unfairly tinged with sadness.

How often is John Travolta referenced at a chamber music concert? Clarinetist Todd Palmer did just that by way of introducing Guillaume Connesson’s “Disco-Toccata for Clarinet and Cello.” The piece conjured less the actor’s famous strut than it did a toe-tapping race through some tight contours. Cellist Raman Ramakrishnan kept pace during the very brief and playful work.

Some of the most entrancing moments of the evening came from three solo pieces performed by guitarist João Luiz. With an engagingly personal performance style, Luiz had listeners leaning in as he followed a delicate J.S. Bach “Allemande” with his own composition “Sereno” and then finished with a “Study” dedicated to him by Sérgio Assad. The last two works in particular brought the concert into a contemporary realm of mystery and melancholy reminiscent of some of the finer moments from the festival’s history of presenting challenging as well as entertaining work.

Sopp and Reardon returned for “Nadiya for Flute and Viola” by Reena Esmail, a piece that suggests the enticing flow of richly imagined rivers. The duo engagingly called forth the rise and fall within a weave of plaintive melodicism.

The most enthusiastically received performance of the night came from Tai Murray on violin and Kibbey on harp on Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Fantaisie for Violin and Harp in A Major, Op. 124.”  Murray took advantage of her time on stage with a spirited performance that brought the piece into a more assertive place than is sometimes the case. Kibbey buoyed the violinist with her instrument’s trademark ethereal qualities while offering a bit of pull to Murray’s push. A standing ovation resulted.

The evening finished with Palmer, Reardon and Ramakrishnan returning to the stage with violinists Jennifer Elowitch and Hao Zhou in tow for an unbounded rendition of Carl Maria von Weber’s “Clarinet Quintet in B-flat Major, Op. 34.” Led by an emphatic Palmer, the performance undoubtedly satisfied those seeking that certain time-honored sense of enthusiastic small-group music-making.

The smiles on the player’s faces, though, will likely be what is most remembered about this musical homecoming.

Steve Feeney is a freelance writer who lives in Portland.