The past, the present but, most of all, the future are all brought into focus when the Australian Chamber Orchestra celebrates 50 years of providing cutting edge music in a 90-minute gala concert.

Artistic Director Richard Tognetti, who has led the group for 30 of those years, can barely keep his emotions in check as he reads a tribute to ACO founder and cellist John Painter – always “Mr Painter” to him – who died earlier this year. 

After the speech Tognetti directs the orchestra in the final movement of Béla Bartók’s Divertimento, a work which Painter and his colleagues performed on the same Sydney Opera House stage at their first concert on November 21, 1975.

Celebrating the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House. Photo © Nic Walker

Emotions run high throughout the whole evening which highlights some of Tognetti’s adventurous collaborations over the years, starting with oud virtuoso Joseph Tawadros and his brother James on riq joining in Summer from Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, and ending in a tribute to the late Michael Leunig sung by Crowded House’s Neil Finn joined by the Sydney Children’s Choir.

Co-hosted by ABC’s Jeremy Fernandez and Megan Burslem, the concert is introduced as “a showcase of everything you know and love about the ACO”, although it is somewhat disjointed at times by the hosts’ frequent, slightly awkward appearances for the TV cameras and the complicated stage set-ups – a big shout-out to the men and women in black with torches who bring on harps, chamber organs and drum kits with such quiet proficiency!

Over the years, Tognetti and his musicians have given us two surf movies; a sometimes disturbing study of crowd behaviour; multi-media productions on rivers and mountains as well as soundtracks to Bill Henson’s photographs, Leunig’s poems and cartoons and Shaun Tan’s graphic book illustrations.

On top of that there were some highly entertaining evenings with comic maestro Barry Humphries.

Celebrating the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House. Photo © Nic Walker

They have also introduced audiences to countless top international musicians as guests, including British countertenor Iestyn Davies, who reprises his 2024 appearance in the Silence and Rapture for this concert singing Arvo Pärt’s haunting arrangement of the folk song My Heart’s in the Highlands, accompanied by two Sydney Dance Company members choreographed by Rafael Bonachela.

Clips from the ACO’s collaborations Mountain and River with Australian documentary filmmaker Jennifer Peedom are shown as a backdrop while Principal Violin Satu Vänskä sets aside her Stradivarius and shows her other side as a compelling chanteuse in Tognetti’s Flying and Radiohead’s Harry Patch (In Memory of), written shortly before the death of Britain’s last surviving World War I veteran.

Tognetti’s skills as an orchestrator are on show in his arrangement of the final movement from Beethoven’s Violin Sonata Op. 48, originally dedicated to the black violinist George Bridgetower – his story was told in a 2021 ACO collaboration with Belvoir St Theatre – and later to Rodolphe Kreutzer (who refused to play it).

Celebrating the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House. Photo © Nic Walker

But the most touching moment comes when the 70 pupils from St Marys North Public School – part of ACO Foundations’ music learning program – file on stage with their violins and cellos and join the orchestra for Simple Gifts, an arrangement of the Lord of the Dance folk song used by Aaron Copland in Appalachian Spring.

They, along with Sydney Children’s Choir, who feature in the night’s encore, Crowded House’s joyful Weather With You, represent the future of live music in Australia.

And maybe, in a few years, some of them will end up joining what has been tagged one of the best chamber orchestras in the world.