The day Richard Tognetti shouted back at an audience member
By Nick Galvin
The Australian Chamber Orchestra has never been afraid of contradictions: ancient hymns alongside Sigur Rós, Beethoven’s Pastoral rubbing shoulders with new commissions, the dissonance of Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso Number 1 keeping company with Vaughan Williams’ ethereal Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.
Unveiling the ACO’s 2026 season, artistic director Richard Tognetti says the thread connecting the music spanning a thousand years is time itself.
‘Music has always been a way to hold onto time’: Richard Tognetti. Credit: Edwina Pickles
“Music has always been a way to hold onto time, or at least touch it differently,” he says, adding that, at its best, music can “hold a moment just long enough to feel outside of time”.
Tognetti also points out that audiences themselves are bound by the duration of the work they are listening to.
“You really have to sit there,” he says. “You can’t speed it up, you can’t slow it down. A great piece of music will feel like it’s over in a heartbeat. A bad piece of music will feel interminable.”
One of the highlights of the year will be Horizon, a new piece from American composer John Luther Adams written for the ACO.
Violinist Helen Rathbone is one of the familiar faces in the Australian Chamber Orchestra.Credit: Nic Walker
Tognetti says commissioning the Pulitzer Prize winner is a “massive coup”.
Adams, whose music has long responded to landscape and climate, has been captivated by Australia since his first visit.
“Not only has he written a piece, he’s fallen in love with Australia and become a very good friend of the orchestra,” Tognetti says. “His music is profoundly important to our existence on the globe.”
Other international voices that will feature next year include Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir. Known for her multi-award-winning score for Joker as well as the HBO miniseries Chernobyl, she will contribute a new work to a program of music from northern Europe called From Winter’s Stillness.
Audiences will also hear premieres of Ellen Reid’s West Coast Sky Eternal and Raminta Šerkšnytė’s De Profundis, plus a new work from Irish composer Garth Knox.
For all its embrace of new music, the ACO is also returning to its heartland. After more than a decade, the orchestra will again tackle Mozart’s last three symphonies, including the mighty Jupiter.
“With those five or so melodies that Mozart’s able to weave into one cohesive whole, I have to say it’s the greatest symphonic movement ever written,” Tognetti says.
And in December, the ACO reunites with The Song Company for Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, last performed by the orchestra in 2017.
“We wanted to do it every year, to knock Messiah off its perch,” Tognetti says. “Things got in the way, but it’s great that we can bring it back.”
Over the course of 35 years leading the ACO, Tognetti says audiences have become far more adventurous and open to new music.
One of the first concerts he played with the ACO was Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso Number One, a landmark in postmodern music, which will feature in next year’s season.
“Back then, dissonance was still an offence,” says Tognetti. “Now it’s become part of our musical languages. Sometimes we find people react more positively to extreme modernism [than to safer repertoire]. Through films and just going to concerts, people have started to accept modernism as part of their language.”
He recalls that first performance of the Schnittke. At the end of a particularly dissonant movement, an audience member yelled, “Thank God it’s over”. Tognetti shouted back: “No, it’s not!”
One of the more remarkable aspects of the ACO is the stability of its playing roster. Musicians such as bassist Maxime Bibeau (joined 1998) and principal violin Helena Rathbone (1995) are such familiar figures on stage that they almost feel like family to long-term ACO attendees.
“We’ve never been more cohesive and we get on really well,” says Tognetti.
The secret, he adds in typical style, is that the orchestra is “a f---wit-free organisation”.
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.