Australian Chamber Orchestra - Richard Tognetti - English Chamber Orchestra - Pinchas Zukerman

Young, charismatic, and innovative, the 17-member Australian Chamber Orchestra has inspired other new ensembles with its collaborative ethos -- it has no conductor -- and innovative approaches. Steeped in a history but always looking to the future, ACO programs embrace celebrated classics alongside new commissions and adventurous cross-artform collaborations. The ACO was founded in 1975 by cellist John Painter. The group took on its current emphasis in 1990 when Richard Tognetti, then just 25 years old, became the group's leader and artistic director. Since then, the ACO has performed classical repertoire, newly commissioned pieces, and collaborations with a wide variety of artists both within the classical sphere (Steven Isserlis, Dawn Upshaw, Emmanuel Pahud) and beyond (rockers Neil Finn and Jonny Greenwood and visual artists and filmmakers, including Michael Leunig, Bill Henson, and Jennifer Peedom). By the early 2000s, the group was performing about 100 concerts a year across several continents. The ACO has appeared at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, London's Royal Festival Hall, and New York's Carnegie Hall, among many others, gaining international popularity with its brisk performances, often given with the players standing up. The group performs more than 100 concerts annually. The Australian Chamber Orchestra's recording career began in 1987 with an album of Australian music and expanded rapidly after Tognetti's hiring. It has recorded not only for ABC Classics label but also for Chandos and, in the early 2010s, for BIS, where its recordings of Mozart's violin concertos (with Tognetti as soloist) won three consecutive Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) awards. A 2015 entry into the crowded field of recordings of Vivaldi's Four Seasons violin concertos again featured Tognetti and was one of the few versions on the market to include the texts of the works' programmatic sonnets, perhaps written by Vivaldi himself. The move was typical of the orchestra's commitment to immediacy and accessibility in its performances and recordings. In 2017, the ACO released an album on ABC Classics pairing music by Mozart with that of Radiohead keyboardist Greenwood, the first Australian-produced classical vinyl for two decades. Other ACO recordings in the late 2010s and early 2020s include the soundtracks to the acclaimed cinematic collaborations Mountain and River.
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