Two interruptions – one avoidable, the other not – break the rhythm but fail to mar the performance of two late Franz Schubert works in the latest tour featuring Artistic Director Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Tognetti has won many admirers for his arrangements of chamber works for small orchestra, but you would think he must have had a head-scratching moment or two when it came to setting Franz Schubert’s formidable Fantasy in C major for violin and piano as an octet for strings and winds.

David Griffiths, Richard Tognetti and Helena Rathbone. Photo © Nic Walker

Both instrumentalists are evenly matched for virtuosity, with Russian pianist Nikolai Lugansky describing it as “the most difficult piece ever written for piano – more difficult than all of Rachmaninov’s concertos put together”.

But Tognetti’s reasons were compelling. He wanted a companion for Schubert’s Octet with the same configuration of instruments – two violins, viola, cello, double bass, clarinet, bassoon and horn – for the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s latest tour. And besides, this homage can be seen as a complement to those other late masterpieces the String Quintet, Death and the Maiden Quartet...