Australian Chamber Orchestra Announces 2018 Season

The Australian Chamber Orchestra's (ACO) Artistic Director Richard Tognetti and Managing Director Richard Evans have today announced the Orchestra's 2018 season. Characteristically bold, ambitious and adventurous, the ACO's 2018 season will take audiences on an immersive journey that traverses from inspired interpretations of 18th and 19th century masterworks through to new music that will challenge the mind and ignite the senses.

For his 29th year at the helm of the ACO, Richard Tognetti will pay homage to some of the most monumental music ever composed, has invited some of music's brightest stars to make their ACO debut, and will premiere new music written by the world's most innovative composers. In 2018 the ACO will also celebrate the virtuosity of its own players, with ACO musicians including Satu Vänskä, Timo-Veikko Valve, Maxime Bibeau, Ike See, Glenn Christenson and Julian Thompson performing as soloists in the season.

Guest artists appearing in the ACO's 2018 season include:

• Australian operatic megastar Nicole Car will make her ACO debut;
• Cellist Steven Isserlis will reunite with Richard Tognetti and the ACO to perform Shostakovich's mammoth First Cello Concerto;
• Violinist Alina Ibragimova will direct the ACO in a program that spans from dark to light;
• Russian violin sensation Ilya Gringolts will make his ACO debut with Paganini's fiendishly difficult First Violin Concerto.

2018 season highlights include:

• Tognetti Tchaikovsky Brahms (1-16 February)

To open the 2018 season, Richard Tognetti and the ACO will join forces with the young guns of the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) to give an emotionally powerful performance of Brahms' Sextet in G major rearranged for string orchestra.

• Goldberg Variations (2 - 16 August)

In a not-to-be-missed event, the ACO will give the Australian premiere of a bold new take on the monumentAl Goldberg Variations. Bernard Labadie's orchestral arrangement of Bach's masterpiece provides an illuminating transformation of the work while remaining faithful to its feel, an approach that resonates with the ACO's distinctive style.

• Tognetti's Beethoven (8 - 21 November)

The ACO will finish 2018 with a bang, in an all-Beethoven program featuring Richard Tognetti performing the composer's mighty Violin Concerto. It's been some 25 years since Richard Tognetti gave his first performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the ACO back in 1993, and he last performed it with the Orchestra 11 years ago.

Watch Richard Tognetti & Richard Evans discuss the ACO's 2018 Season here: https://youtu.be/teQoVAQQ8Qs