★★★★☆ Meaty winter fare delivered with authenticity and heart.

Kincoppal Rose Bay Chapel, Sydney
August 16, 2016

There’s nothing quite beats intimate music making in an appropriate location when the musicians are clearly playing for the sheer joy of it. This was my second time hearing Richard Gill’s marvellous young period instrument ensemble orchestra seventeen88, and if anything it was even better than the first.

One of the best things about this orchestra is their willingness to programme big, bold and beautiful, willing an audience to step out of the comfort zone of the mainstream rep and try something intriguing and new. Of course, Mozart and Haydn are hardly rarities, but how many of us will have heard the 16-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus’s Symphony No 17 played live? Or for that matter Haydn’s 62nd Symphony, tucked away as it is in his middle-period and without benefit of catchy subtitle (I’d have lamely called it “the Resolute” for it’s determination to stay resolutely in the key of D Major).

The first half of the programme was chamber music – a Mendelssohn String Symphony (No 6 in E Flat) and a delicious...