The Singapore Symphony Orchestra has announced that it will make its Australian debut in February 2025, with concerts in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. This is SSO’s first overseas engagement since 2017.

The season also includes a highly anticipated collaboration between the Singapore and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras and Choruses for the choral-orchestral spectacular Carmina Burana, performed at the Esplanade Concert Hall in Singapore on 22 and 23 August. Led by Chief Conductor Jaime Martín, the MSO and the MSO Chorus will be joined by 2023 Artist in Residence Siobhan Stagg (soprano), Andrew Goodwin (tenor), and Christopher Tonkin (baritone). The program also includes Fanfare for a City by Australian composer Maria Grenfell, Stravinsky’s The Firebird Suite (1919) and, in homage to Jaime’s Spanish roots, De Falla’s Three Dances from The Three-Cornered Hat.

The MSO signed a four-year cultural partnership with Singapore Symphony Group in 2018, which was later extended through 2025.

Members of Singapore Symphony Orchestra. Photo supplied

Led by the orchestra’s Music Director Hans Graf, the program for the Australian tour features 17-year-old violin star Chloe Chua and the orchestra’s Sydney-born Principal Cellist Pei-Sian Ng performing Brahms’s final orchestral work, the 1887 Double Concerto for violin and cello. Singaporean composer Koh Cheng Jin’s Luciola singapura, a shimmering evocation of the Singapore firefly, is also on the bill, alongside Tchaikovsky’s towering Fifth Symphony.

Ticketing details have yet to be announced.

Chloe Chua. Image suplied

On its home ground – Singapore’s Victoria Concert Hall – the SSO season showcases violinists Maxim Vengerov, James Ehnes and Yu-Chien Tseng, pianists Hélène Grimaud, Daniil Trifonov and Behzod Abduraimov, cellist Steven Isserlis, erhu player Yiwen Lu and trumpeter Pacho Flores.

Guest conductors Vasily Petrenko, Mario Venzago, Lawrence Renes and Long Yu will return to the podium during 2025. Principal Guest Conductor Okko Kamu will conduct Sibelius’s Violin Concerto and Second Symphony.

Singapore Symphony Orchestra performs in the Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, 12 February; Hamer Hall, Melbourne 14 February, and QPAC, Brisbane, 16 February.