Caught up in the moment, a woman in the row behind me was moved to sing along to Vivaldi’s Autumn.

It wasn’t long before she got The Glare, of course, courtesy of a gentleman in front. She quickly put herself on mute.

It’s one of those interactions that captures the tensions between ‘old’ and ‘new’ audiences for classical music, but it’s also an illustration of the viscerally infectious appeal of this collaboration between the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Egyptian-Australian oud master Joseph Tawadros, and his percussionist brother James Tawadros.

To be honest, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see people on their feet and swaying to the music at some points in the evening. And that would have been fine with me.

The Australian Chamber Orchestra featuring Joseph Tawadros and James Tawadros. Photo © Nic Walker

First seen in 2015, this (slightly altered) program weaves the European and Byzantine traditions into an aural postcard of the Venice eloquently described in Robert Dessaix’s program essay as “a trading and military backwater, a kind of fabulous stage set for fashionable tourists to live out the Oriental fantasies in”.

The Venice of Vivaldi’s time (circa 1720) was,...