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Two mighty piano sonatas bookend Marc-André Hamelin's concert at Sydney's City Recital Hall. 

A most appealing Romantic programme by the French pianist at Sydney's City Recital Hall, played with accurate finesse in search of emotional highlights. 

A heartfelt performance from American countertenor with the Bach Akademie Australia with contrasting spiritual works by Bach and Vivaldi. 

Awe-inspiring performances of much loved classics in Sydney, yet the musical eyebrows have reasons to go (and stay) up. 

Handel's Giulio Cesare is heavily abridged in Sydney, but generally well-performed musically, albeit with a rather awkward staging by Neil Armfield. 

Japanese soprano Yukie Sato joins the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra for a concert of Handel arias and orchestral works by Vivaldi and Pisandel, with a significant contribution from concertmaster Shawn Lee-Chen. 

Mahler's epic five-movement symphonic song cycle is performed by a chamber ensemble with mixed results.

Kristian Bezuidenhout joins the ACO for a piecemeal programme leading to a complete performance of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto. 

Although abbreviated, Pinchgut Opera's production of Handel's Rinaldo makes a powerful dramatic impact and exemplifies high musical values, with excellent orchestral playing and consistently fine singing.

A terrific collaboration between Russian pianist Polina Leschenko and the Australian Chamber Orchestra in music by Chopin and Mendelssohn.

Cheerful energy and exploding fireworks in the ACO's Sydney programme, if lacking in a little repose. 

Unseen since the 18th Century apart from one night in Germany, Legrenzi's Giustino deserves to re-enter the repertoire after its revival by Pinchgut Opera's Erin Helyard.

Erin Helyard and his cast bring terrifically strong musical values to Charpentier's Médée, but Justin Way's production falters. 

The Finnish composer/pianist's refined and idiosyncratic musical style makes for a great collaboration with the ACO solo string players.

Celebrated soprano Miriam Allan headlines this energetic program of music written for the female orphan musicians of Venice's famous Ospedale.

Ravishing music and performances, a crazy G&S plot, but physicality that tends to distract in Constantine Costi's production.

Acrobats flying to the music of Vivaldi and his contemporaries makes for a surprising but highly entertaining combination in this energetic pastiche.

In arguably its best production to date, theatre luminary Neil Armfield combines with Pinchgut and Erin Helyard for the first time to deliver this electrifying production of Rameau's comic masterpiece, Platée.

Love comes in 57 varieties in Cavalli's Apollo and Dafne, and they're both enjoyed and suffered by a dynamic cast of six playing 20 characters.

Not quite ready for a full-blown opera, but Sydney's Pinchgut maintains its historically informed purity with a delicately expanded version of Charpentier's Messe de Minuit.

The Australian Chamber orchestra gives its first subscription concert in Sydney since the beginning of the year. 

Concert life returns to Sydney with a programme of Mendelssohn and Schoenberg by the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

To mark #Beethoven250, the Australian Chamber Orchestra plays his first three symphonies in concert. But can one eat three delicious desserts in one sitting? 

An exquisite evening of British 20th-century choral music from Tenebrae under Nigel Short at the Sydney Festival, with outstanding renditions of the music of Parry, Bingham and Stanford.

British choir Tenebrae performs Masterworks of the Renaissance in Sydney's City Recital Hall. 

Vivaldi's Farnace is reconstructed by Pinchgut Opera in ways which might not do the composer full dramatic justice, but the production and high musical values provide an excellent night of operatic drama. 

The expanded forces of the ACO take on two major nineteenth-century symphonic works by Dvorak and Brahms, prefaced by world and Australian premieres of pieces by Andrew Ford and Andrew Norman

This concert in the ACO's “Celebrating Mozart” season included two symphonies in G minor – by Haydn and Mozart – to bookend the evening. 

A disappointing outing for the Emerson String Quartet in the first Sydney concert of their eight-city tour of Australia.

The pictures win out as Bill Henson's powerful, complex and mysterious images take on the ACO's music, ranging from REM to Pēteris Vasks.

Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria is given the Pinchgut treatment, with an abstract staging complementing historically informed music-making under Erin Helyard.

Soprano Alexandra Oomens confirmed her star potential, but all soloists and players shone in this jubilant concert featuring Telemann's Thunder Ode and Bach's Easter Oratorio

Under guest director Lorenza Borrani a subdued ACO offers a programme of arrangements of Prokofiev and Beethoven sandwiching a new work by Dobrinka Tabakova.

The Sixteen enchant the audience in Sydney with an intelligently-created programme of British composers.

The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra celebrates the beginning of its 30th season with a fittingly chosen programme.

For their 2019 season-opener, Tognetti and the ACO collaborate with the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir to give a meditative, quasi-religious program centred on Bach and Pärt.

Perhaps Pinchgut Opera's finest production to date, a brave presentation of a classic Baroque opera, little heard in Australia apart from Handel, benefits from the star presence of Vivca Genaux in splendid form.

A pair of masterpieces in the Australian Chamber Orchestra's latest programme, in typically thought-provoking interpretations. 

Ilya Gringolts brings his brand of unspectacular virtuosity to the ACO's latest programme, with the Paganini Violin Concerto no. 1 and Bartók's Divertimento clear highlights.

Pared-down forces of the ACO performed pared down masterpieces, in a brilliantly conceived programme which included works by Wagner, Strauss and Mozart.

The title of the latest programme by the Australian Chamber Orchestra is simply: Goldberg Variations. While Bernard Labadie’s ingenious arrangement of JS Bach’s Goldberg Variations for string orchestra takes up all of the second half of the programme, the first half was no less interesting.

Handel's Athalia is a wonderful English oratorio but this production, while musically wonderful, was marred by a problematic staging with infuriating surtitles.

It takes artistic invention and considerable courage to design a concert programme solely around tragic topics; yet the connecting link between the various items on the last subscription concert by the Australian Chamber Orchestra was – directly or indirectly – death and great composers’ reaction to it. The key of C minor invariably carries sombre overtones in the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

In their Sydney season-opener, the ACO with guest players from ANAM deliver a thoroughly satisfying account of two 19th-century standards and introduce two new works to Australian audiences.

Pinchgut Opera's L'incoronazione di Poppea is a glorious feast of singing, acting and playing but the production is brutal, taking Monteverdi's vision of corruption in high places to excessive lengths.

The first programme of Nicolas Altstaedt and Aleksandar Madžar for their tour around Australia offered an insightful selection of 20th-century chamber music masterpieces.

Four years ago, the ACO mounted The Reef. Mountain is clearly its successor: another film project involving scenes of nature peopled by extreme-sports enthusiasts, screened while an eclectic soundtrack is played live by the orchestra.

One of the reasons why the programmes of the Australian Chamber Orchestra are both challenging and inspiring is because of the ensemble’s always interesting and thought-provoking approach to repertoire.

The American Pacifica Quartet was convincingly introduced to Aussie Nigel Westlake's Second Quartet for their Down Under tour; but revealed its essence in the theatre of Shostakovich.

Historically informed rarities from Rameau and Vinci aim to recreate the world of 18th-century opera-going in Paris. But a misaligned production distracts from this specialised experience.