It has been over a decade since the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra conferred the title Chief Conductor. The last to fill that post was Arvo Volmer who departed in 2013. On that basis alone, the arrival of Mark Wigglesworth for an initial three-year term deserves a fanfare. 

Mark Wigglesworth

Mark Wigglesworth. Photo © Sim Canetty-Clarke

Not only is the persuasive British conductor a deep thinker and noted author (his book The Silent Musician: Why Conducting Matters has been translated into Spanish and Chinese), he has commanded orchestras from the Berlin Philharmonic and Royal Concertgebouw to the London Symphony and the New York Philharmonic. His discography includes outstanding accounts of the Brahms Piano Concertos with Stephen Hough, a distinguished Shostakovich cycle, Vaughan Williams and Britten with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Mahler with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

The appointment may feel like a coup, but Wigglesworth has been working with the orchestra for 11 years now. “We clicked immediately,” he declares, a warm, thoughtful presence chatting over Zoom from his family home in rural Sussex. “We can talk about chemistry and make it all sound rather...