The Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) has announced its 2024 season, one that includes a new collaboration with Sydney Dance Company, explores the music of JS Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Haydn, Tchaikovsky and Pärt, and begins with a long-awaited event: the national tour of Richard Tognetti and Jennifer Peedom’s cinematic and musical odyssey River.

Among the international stars presented by ACO during 2024 will be singers Stuart Skelton, Catherine Carby and Iestyn Davies, South African fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout, Scottish guitar sensation Sean Shibe and the French-German cellist Nicolas Altstaedt.

Richard Tognetti and the ACO. Photo © Charlie Kinross

ACO feels like it’s in a good place, Tognetti tells Limelight – literally and creatively. It’s hard not to feel the former in ACO’s Walsh Bay office on a spring day overlooking Sydney Harbour.

“We are gobsmacked with gratitude for this place, every single day,” Tognetti says. “Whatever else you say about the last New South Wales government, they should at least get credit for seeing this precinct through. It’s something...