Artistic Director Eugene Ughetti’s 2026 program is deeply rooted in place, from site-specific bell works at Parliament House and the National Carillon to chamber and choral premieres.
Anna-Louise Cole sings Wagner Lieder and Strauss’s Four Last Songs, the Australian String Quartet surveys British music from Purcell to Britten and Rebecca Clarke, and Switzerland’s Ensemble Contrechamps delivers a meditative performance of Jürg Frey’s Récit des sensations fragiles at Snow Concert Hall. Luminescence Chamber Singers unveils a program built around a bespoke vocal-processing system, while The Rite of Spring closes the festival in Stravinsky’s own arrangement for two pianos and percussion

Limelight Editor’s Choice

Folk & Tango brings together a dazzling constellation of soloists whose musical identities are shaped by rich cultural lineages. Superstar sound-sorcerers from Spain, Scotland and Serbia join forces with the Australian String Quartet and Ensemble Liaison, to create a vivid collaborative tapestry of rhythm, dance and storytelling drawn from across the globe. This is music rooted in community reimagined through the virtuosity of today’s leading performers.

The program centres on Antonín Dvořák’s Bagatelles Op. 47, written in 1878 for intimate music-making among friends. These five miniature gems weave folk-inflected rhythms, lilting melodies and a buoyant sense of invention to offer a warm window into Dvořák’s bohemian spirit. His deep affection for Czech dance forms permeates every page: rustic polkas, lyrical turns and playful exchanges shaped with the deftness of a composer able to elevate simple materials into finely wrought emotional worlds. The unusual inclusion of harmonium adds gentle nostalgia, evoking nineteenth-century village parlours and the domestic sociability from which so much folk tradition springs.