★★★★☆ It may be old music, but Tognetti’s Brahms calls for new ears.

City Recital Hall, Angel Place
August 18, 2015

Over recent years the Australian Chamber Orchestra has taken the opportunity to pump up a bit and tackle some of the repertoire’s bigger beasts. Alongside Mahler, Sibelius and Beethoven, one of their on-going voyages of discovery has been the symphonies of Johannes Brahms and this latest concert series looks at that composer’s Third in tandem with a pair of Mozart works, which similarly benefit from the expanded orchestral line-up.

The Overture to The Magic Flute made a splendid curtain raiser, the three chord opening salvo immediately displaying the weight that the ACO can summon up in the intimate acoustic of the City Recital Hall. Fifty players can make Mozart sound positively Beethovian and it was a fabulous, exciting performance from sonorous start to racing finish, the crisply articulated strings bouncing off the double woodwind sound with tremendous gusto.

Richard Tognetti, leading with violin in hand, segued seamlessly into Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante – effectively a double concerto for violin and viola. This is among the last chances ACO audiences will get to hear Principal Violist Chris Moore playing his anonymously loaned 1610...