As the leaves start to fall from the trees, for the past eight autumns violinist Priya Mitchell, who grew up in Oxford, has invited a group of favourite colleagues to her home city to take part in her Oxford Chamber Music Festival. In that time she has gained a large and enthusiastic audience, judging by the packed house at this year’s opening concert in the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, and the huge cheer that greeted her appearance on the platform.

This year’s theme was icons, music that was “once upon a time revolutionary and iconoclastic, now much loved and even iconic”, to quote the programme introduction. That description certainly applies to the opening work, Mozart’s String Quartet in C major K.465 (Dissonance), here played by Daniel Rowland and Katharine Gowers (violins), Lise Berthaud (viola), and Bjørg Værnes Lewis (cello). It’s a work that immediately pulls you up short with a couple of discordant harmonies.

One of the characteristics of the OCMF is that there is little rehearsal time, and that could be a big disadvantage for a string quartet. In this case, however, you felt that the spontaneity involved gave the music a most appropriate extra edge.

Next, Alexander Lonquich played Alban Berg’s Piano Sonata, Op 1. Lonquich’s magnificent playing provided a concise reminder that ground- breaking music needs to be iconoclastic before it can become iconic. Moving from the brittle to the lyrical, this piece well suited the Jacqueline du Pré’s bright acoustic.

Finally to something unquestionably iconic, Schubert’s expansive Octet. There’s no hiding in the back row here, with each instrument ruthlessly exposed — not that this presents a problem to musicians of this calibre. Led by Priya Mitchell herself, each player relished the chance to add character and colour. Every audience member will have had their favourite moments: mine were the variations on a theme, with its cheeky rhythms seeming to send up a genteel Viennese ball.