Bach, Beethoven and Bartók

Bach, Beethoven, Bartók… and Sufjan Stevens: a typically refreshing take on the classical concert format from the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Beethoven would have expected no less – and he’d surely have loved the freshness and intensity that the rising Australian soprano Nicole Car brings to everything she touches. Bartók – performed side by side with Guildhall musicians – and Bach frame the concert with their own, startlingly unpredictable takes on musical convention.

And in between comes Sufjan Stevens’s Run Rabbit Run – string music with a subversive twist, described by one critic as an ‘uncategorizable oddity’. For the ACO’s director Richard Tognetti – a self-proclaimed revolutionary spirit – that’s irresistible. The ACO thrives on the unexpected. Though as The Guardian put it in 2016, ’What couldn’t be doubted, as it never can with this fabulous band, is the commitment and panache of every morsel of the playing‘. Bring it on.