Extreme circumstances often provoke innovation. And for classical musicians, the global pandemic was about as extreme as it gets.

Deprived of the opportunity to rehearse in groups and play for audiences, musicians were faced with a stark choice: innovate or stagnate.

Like many of his colleagues, conductor-pianist Vladimir Fanshil and his partner, soprano Eleanor Lyons, found themselves not just without work, but physically stranded, unable to return to their adopted home in Vienna after Lyons’ debut as Donna Anna in Opera Australia’s 2020 production of Don Giovanni.

“I was conducting in Türkiye at the time,” recalls Fanshil. “We made a decision there and then to ride out the pandemic in Australia.”

Vladimir Fanshil: “People are so hungry for a multi-sensory experience.” Photo supplied.

During that first long lockdown, when every theatre and concert hall in the country went dark, many musicians gravitated to the internet as a way of connecting to an audience.

Fanshil and Lyons resisted. “We just didn’t believe in music online,” Fanshil says. “For me, the whole point of music is communication through emotions and to do that, you need people to come together. It’s like worshipping in a church or...