Australian Chamber Orchestra brings four of eight national tours to UWA Winthrop Hall for 2026

Australian Chamber Orchestra will bring four of eight national tours to UWA’s Winthrop Hall in 2026, after a year learning to love the venue during closure of Perth Concert Hall for renovations.

Guest violin virtuoso Ilya Gringolts will direct the ensemble in March, sharing top billing with ACO principal Satu Vanska in “The Devil’s Violin” — a nod to Giuseppe Tartini’s Violin Sonata in G minor, aka “The Devil’s Trill”.

Tartini’s sonata is a fiendlishly challenging work for the soloist, Gingolts, and Perth audiences can hear it not once but twice when Vanska returns in October to lead WA Symphony Orchestra in “Dances and Devils” at His Majesty’s Theatre on the cusp of Halloween.

Gringolts and Vanska pair up for Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Violins in C major, in a program featuring Australian composer Paul Stanhope’s Giving Ground, commissioned by ACO as a companion piece to Francesco Geminiani Concerto Grosso No.12 in D minor “La Follia”.

The mix of established repertoire with contemporary music is rounded out by Johann Paul von Westhoff Violin Sonata No.3 in D minor: Imitation of the Bell, Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto in D minor, Sofia Gubaidulina’s String Quartet No.2, and Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Aria, Opus 9.

ACO artistic director Richard Tognetti returns to WA in July with “From Winter Stillness”, when vocalists Trio Mediaeval and jazz trumpeter Arve Henriksen join the ensemble, bolstered by emerging artists, in a celebration of Nordic light and landscapes.

“Ancient hymns from Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Estonia capture the majesty of the frozen North, together with the quiet joy of Sigur Ros and the haunting beauty of (Hollywood composer) Hildur Guonadottir,” ACO says.

Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto — aka “the David Bowie of the fiddle” — directs ACO in October for “Legends and Luminaries”, a program ranging from Mozart’s Magic Flute to the present day.

Kuusisto’s own arrangement of Magic Flute highlights is followed by Nico Muhly’s Shrink: Concerto for Violin and Strings — written for the Finnish maestro — and the Australian premiere of Pulitzer Prize winner Ellen Reid’s West Coast Sky Eternal, with Felix Mendelssohn’s String Quintet No.2 in B-flat major to close.

Tognetti wraps up the ACO touring season at Winthrop Hall in November with “Beethoven’s Pastoral”; a program devoted to the Romantic uber composer culminating in the eponymous Sixth Symphony, a masterpiece evoking nature in light, shade and colour.

The Coriolan Overture opens the bill, followed by Tognetti, ACO cellist Timo-Veikko Valve and Russian-Australian pianist Konstantin Shamray in the lyrical Triple Concerto for Violin, Cello and Piano in C major.

And as an afterglow, violinist Anthony Marwood directs the rising talents of ACO Collective across three December nights for the Sound & Sense Festival at Vasse Felix, in Margaret River.

Program at aco.com.au/whats-on/2026/season.