Under Richard Tognetti’s direction, the Australian Chamber Orchestra has never been especially interested in acting its age or delivering the same-old. It has made a selling point of placing old and young works into close contact and bringing the familiar in unfamiliar company. Season 2027 is no exception.

In a series of meaningful collisions, Mozart encounters Cage, Reich rubs shoulders with Schubert, and an Australian string orchestra presents a birthday gift to one of America’s most significant living composers – John Adams.

In a season centrepiece, Adams – who turns 80 in 2027 – will partner with the ACO in a concert arranged around the world premiere of Gioia, a new work written specifically for Tognetti and ACO principal violin Satu Vänskä.

Richard Tognetti. Portrait © Georges Antoni

The process of its creation was unconventional, Tognetti tells Limelight. “It’s a kind of reverse commission.”

The story begins with Adams’s son, composer Samuel Adams, whose music the ACO has performed and with whom Tognetti and the orchestra have developed a friendship. John Adams attended the premiere of...