Instrument: Artistic Director

Victor Ullate premieres his version of Carmen in Madrid’s Teatros del Canal. Mallarme’s story and Bizet’s score are updated in a sophisticated balletic rendering of the myth.

In this year's London Festival of Baroque Music, the programme of Austrian Baroque rarities by Swiss-based early music group Les Passions de l’Ame particularly caught my eye.

A warm and charming Coppélia performed by Julio Bocca's excellent young Uruguayan company.   

In a relatively traditional programme, the Australian Chamber Orchestra reach the heights thanks to soloist Slava Grigoryan (on guitar), and a scintillating performance of Beethoven's Symphony no. 7.

Julia Lezhneva partners with Richard Tognetti and the ACO to deliver a thrilling program of Baroque arias, in which her vocal agility and expressivity are on full display.

Arrangements aplenty as the Australian Chamber Orchestra take on Bach's Art of Fugue and Beethoven's Op.130, with Richard Tognetti the accomplished soloists in Mozart's Violin Concerto no. 5.

It takes artistic courage to devote almost a whole concert to music associated with cinema, but then Richard Tognetti, the artistic director and concert master of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, never lacked creative thinking or musical audacity.