Following last year’s acclaimed performances of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, the Australian World Orchestra (AWO) has announced it will assemble again in October for a series of concerts featuring one of the great voices of our times – that of the German countertenor Andreas Scholl.

Andraes Scholl. Photo © Marco Borggreve

In two concerts in Sydney hosted in the intimate Nielson theatre in Walsh Bay, and one in Melbourne at the Hanson Dyer Hall, audiences will experience Scholl’s extraordinary voice in tandem with an orchestra of elite Australian musicians, many working overseas, who reunite specially for this series.

In part one of each concert Scholl will sing Baroque masterpieces by Bach and Vivaldi and works by the Estonian minimalist Arvo Pärt – a composer whose works the singer has explored extensively with the Vienna Morphing Orchestra in recent years.

The second part of each concert will be devoted to Mozart’s majestic Gran Partita, a showcase for some of the AWO’s finest wind musicians.