2023 Concert Season – 10th Anniversary Celebration

Welcome to the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra’s 2023 Concert Season!

In 2023, we celebrate our 10th anniversary – ten years of exploring historically informed performance through memorable concerts and enriching education programs – with a series of concerts that journey from the luxury of Vienna to the rugged landscapes of Scotland, from the close intimacy of chamber music to the grandeur of the full orchestra on period instruments. And, in honour of Richard Gill’s extraordinary legacy, we continue to INSPIRE, EDUCATE and ENLIGHTEN, as we have done every day for the past decade.

For the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra’s 2023 Concert Season, we welcome you to our concerts and music education programs presented throughout the year across Australia’s eastern seaboard. In addition to our mainstage concert series, we will present our unique music education programs; the Voyage of Musical Discovery, designed for intergenerational audiences to explore compositional links and similarities in Australian contemporary music alongside Classical and Romantic works, and the Young Mannheim Symphonists, created for secondary and tertiary students, and emerging artists to nurture and develop the next generation by offering historical perspectives and insights.

Please visit our website regularly and subscribe to our mailing list to be kept up to date with our performances for audiences throughout metropolitan and regional New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and the ACT.

MOZART CLARINET QUINTET, SCHUBERT & HUMMEL explores the explosion in popularity of the clarinet in the late 1700s when the instrument was brought to the fore as a soloist, and became heavily featured in chamber music. Much of this is due to the great virtuoso Anton Stadler, whose expressive playing awakened everyone to the instrument’s possibilities – especially Mozart, who fell in love with the clarinet, describing it as the instrument closest to the human voice. He wrote his Clarinet Quintet for Stadler, a work that remains among Mozart’s most beloved compositions centuries later. It also directly inspired his one-time student and protégé Johann Nepomuk Hummel, whose Clarinet Quartet is a beautifully balanced work of chamber music that demonstrates his significance as a bridge between the Classical and Romantic eras.

BEETHOVEN SEPTET & LOUISE FARRENC NONET showcases the expressive potential of larger chamber groups of strings and winds, and the beautiful sounds made when these instruments are balanced by a master. Beethoven’s Septet was one of his early successes, taking the popular Viennese format of a serenade or divertimento but imbuing it with virtuosity and complexity. The Septet was such a hit that very few composers dared write for a similarly-sized ensemble for fifty years, until the great French pianist, professor and publisher Louise Farrenc wrote her Nonet in 1849. Full of rich textures and intricate scoring, it demonstrates her irrefutable compositional skill.

MENDELSSOHN SCOTTISH & BEETHOVEN EIGHT symphonic program opens in the magical world of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Mendelssohn’s enchanting overture, full of twinkling fairy feet and sparkling strings. It ends in the brooding landscapes of Scotland with Mendelssohn’s ‘Scottish’ Symphony, inspired by his travels there as a young man – a hugely evocative and dramatic work. In between, we take a journey of a different kind, plumbing the depths of the symphony in Beethoven’s Eighth. This is a remarkable work that confounds expectations and surprises at every turn, yet is full of toe-tapping melodies.

We are so excited to be celebrating our 10th anniversary with our incredible audiences, generous donors, patrons and supporters, government funding bodies and presenting partners who have been with us along the way. We are hugely thankful for your support for enabling us to continue to INSPIRE, EDUCATE and ENLIGHTEN.

Onwards and upwards,

Rachael Beesley & Nicole van Bruggen
Co-Artistic Directors
Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra