Return visits from our overseas stars always create a hum of excitement and anticipation. Take the annual sold-out five-star performances by the Australian World Orchestra, for instance, or the tours of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

Sydney’s 30-year-old violinist Harry Ward chose the intimate acoustic of the Opera House’s Utzon Room for his latest visit, giving a 75-minute recital that showed the many sides of this performer who joined the Berlin Philharmoniker in 2023 after a period spent in its training orchestra, the Karajan Akademie.

Before that he had worked his way up ranks with the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s nursery group ACO2, as well as appearing with Kathryn Selby in a concert during the 2020 lockdown and fronting the ANAM Orchestra for a rare performance by Konstantin Shamray of Alfred Schnittke’s Piano Concerto.

In the latest of the Utzon Music Series concerts he was joined by Sydney’s Ying Ho, a late replacement for Finnish pianist Noora Ylönen, but as the Berlin-based violinist told the audience: “We’ve been playing together for a bloody long time.”

Harry Ward and Ying Ho, Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House. Photo © Cassandra Hannagan

First he gave his 1780 Pietro Antonio Landolfi violin a strenuous solo workout with the eight short dance movements of Johann Joseph Vilsmayr’s Partita No. 5. This was published in 1715 – a few years before Bach composed his solo violin sonatas and partitas – and is one of the few surviving works by the Salzburg-based composer violinist who is thought to have been trained by Biber.

The cross-tuned strings lent a powerful harmonic effect throughout this 10-minute piece, with its jaunty Rigodon and graceful Sarabande.

More non-standard tuning was needed for the next work, Lisa Lim’s Cardomom, a five-minute solo with a dropped E-string which the Sydney composer wrote for Ward in 2024. Sliding figures and warm double-stopping gave this soliloquy a spicy Eastern feel in keeping with its title.

Harry Ward and Ben Ward. Photo © Cassandra Hannagan

Ying came on stage for a selection of Dmitri Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes Op. 34. These were written in 1932-3 shortly after he completed Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and they marked his comeback to the concert hall as a pianist. Some of them were later transcribed for violin and piano by Russian composer and violinist Dmitri Tsyganov.

The 10 short pieces Ward selected covered a variety of moods and styles, from lush lyricism and off-kilter waltzes to starker fare and slightly unhinged circus music, a reminder that the composer spent time as a cinema pianist accompanying silent movies.

Ward and Ying combined with an easy chemistry, a quality demonstrated in trumps in the superb performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Spring Violin Sonata which closed the program.

But before we got to that Harry was joined by his older brother Benjamin – a member of Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s double bass section – for a jointly composed piece pragmatically titled New Work. The two string instruments, played without any amplification, vied with each other in a 10-minute in-the-moment work which reminded this listener of the improvisatory prowess of home-grown jazz trio The Necks.

A veritable arsenal of sonic effects was summoned by bow and fingers with Benjamin setting up a powerful pendulum-like swaying rhythm and Harry riffing along, his rapid bowing giving it a hypnotic pulse.

Harry Ward, Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House. Photo © Cassandra Hannagan

The Beethoven was wonderful, played with some judicious rubato in the opening movement which kept the familiar music sounding fresh.

The Adagio was sublime, dying to a sweet whisper, and after the cat-and-mouse of the Scherzo there was a hint of paprika in Ward’s slightly slurred flurries in the Rondo finale.

For more information on the 2026 Utzon Music series visit this link.