Richard Tognetti and Polina Leschenko in Recital Together For Two Shows Only

ACO Artistic Director Richard Tognetti plays in recital with one of his favourite performance partners, the "young, brilliant, and vivacious Russian pianist", Polina Leschenko for two performances only - Monday 12 September in Sydney, and Tuesday 13 September in Canberra.

Leschenko, born to two professional pianists, made her debut with the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra aged eight, which led to a whole host of engagements on some of the world's most high-profile stages. By the age of 12, she made her debut at London's Barbican Hall as soloist in Beethoven's Emperor Concerto. A protégée of the famed Argentinian pianist, Martha Argerich, Leschenko travels the world performing in celebrated halls including Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw and the Konzerthaus in Vienna.

The works Tognetti has chosen to perform reflect a refreshing take on the classical violin recital, tackling the grand European tradition head on. Later this year in November, Tognetti becomes London's Barbican Centre's first Artist-in-Residence at Milton Concert Hall where he will appear as a genre-defying performer and pedagogue, as well as recreating this concert with Leschenko.

Opening with a piece from the father of holy minimalism, Arvo Pärt, who was in great part responsible for putting Estonia on the map as an important musical nation. Fratres is a "mesmerising set of variations ... combining frantic activity and sublime stillness that encapsulates Pärt's observation that 'the instant and eternity are struggling within us'."

Beethoven's Violin Sonata No.5 in F major is a sunny and fresh work that has been aptly nicknamed, Spring. Irkanda 1 was penned by Sculthorpe, who was Australia's foremost classical composer; he established the connection between music and his native country as one of his artistic goals. His works were often given Aboriginal titles or were nourished by Indigenous legends, with Irkanda meaning a distant and secluded place. The concert closes with Brahms' Violin Sonata No.3 in D minor. He wrote this work over a series of working summer holidays spent in farming country on picturesque Lake Thun in Switzerland. There is an interesting rumour that the piece is meant to be a character study of its dedicatee, the conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow. The premiere was given in Budapest in 1888 with Brahms himself as pianist.