More than a quarter of a century has passed since the day a young violinist with the reputation of wunderkind (or enfant terrible) strode into the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s executive offices in Martin Place and gave an impromptu display of his virtuosity with the opening bars of Paganini on a borrowed violin.
“Will you buy this for me?” Richard Tognetti asked an astonished David Murray, the then CEO of the bank.
The price tag for the 1759 Giovanni Battista Guadagnini instrument was a mere $1.2m.
Was it Tognetti’s prodigious talent and unaffected charm, or the favourable economic conditions of an Australian economy having just risen from the ashes of the recession we had to have? Either way, Murray said yes.
“And then a bit later, we got another call,” Tognetti says. “‘We’ve got this Stradivarius...’”
Today the Australian Chamber Orchestra, through its patrons, benefactors and an ACO fund encouraging supporters to invest in an instrument ownership bank, is the custodian of nine of the world’s most valuable string instruments from the golden age. They are kept not behind humidity-controlled glass shrines in museums, but played and heard nightly on the stages of Australia’s and the world’s most prestigious concert halls.
The jewel in the crown, according to the ACO managing director Richard Evans, is the circa 1580 Gasparo da Salò bass played by double bassist Maxime Bibeau, which was discovered intact in a bombed out Augustinian monastery in northern Italy after the second world war.
“The wood from the instrument dates back to the late 1400s … it makes you think, how many hands has it been through,” Evans says. “It’s incredible to think of the kind of world events these instruments have seen, the survival stories these instruments must have.”
Tognetti’s Guadagnini has now been passed down the line to ensemble member Liisa Pallandi; these days Tognetti plays a 1743 Giuseppe “del Gesù” Guarneri violin, with the apocryphal backstory that it was once owned by Paganini himself, who lost it in a gambling game.
The estimated value of the instrument – praised by its player for its rich weeping sound when it was bought for the ACO by an anonymous benefactor 17 years ago – was $10m.
The point of all this?
The ACO launched its 50th anniversary season this month, and 2025 will also mark the 35th year of Tognetti’s artistic leadership. For the better part of both of these milestones, the ACO has fought against the accusations of elitism; it sets adventurous and eclectic programs that appeal to a wider audience than the traditional classical concert-going audience, which is an undeniably ageing demographic; it collaborates with jazz and rock musicians, film-makers, cabaret artists and drag queens; and it operates an outreach program at a primary school in one of the most disadvantaged areas of western Sydney where each child entering year 1 is given a violin or a cello (not a Stradivarius).
But when it comes to the instruments played by the 17 core members of the ACO, Tognetti becomes immediately and unabashedly elitist.
“Yes, it’s elitist, and some say extravagant, but these instruments are among the most exquisite artefacts, works of art, masterpieces crafted by human hands,” he says. “We know best on this, and it’s an immutable fact that when you see the instrument up close and you feel it and touch it, then you really understand the intrinsic value of these things. These days, try buying a terrace house in Paddington for the price of one of these.”
Tognetti does not own a terrace house in Paddington. But it is something of a small miracle that since 1989 he has consistently made Sydney his home. When, at the prodigious age of 25 he was appointed leader and then artistic director of the ACO, his still being there at 30 seemed just as improbable to him as it was to his Australian audiences.
He had already cemented himself as a familiar soloist with the Bern Symphony Orchestra, been guest concertmaster with the Basel Sinfonietta and won best graduate performer of the year from the Bern Conservatorium.
“Ninety per cent of us thought we’d be going back to Europe, and when I say back, that’s because most of us had studied in Europe or America, mainly Europe, and we thought we were just here for the short term,” he says. “Now we have musicians from Europe who came out here to experiment at first, to try a new life in a new world, and they’ve stayed.”
A decade into Tognetti’s leadership, Australia recognised the violinist’s commitment to stay by naming him, through a popular vote, one of the country’s National Living Treasures. He was one of just four Australians in the classical music sphere to receive the honour, alongside Dame Joan Sutherland, composer Peter Sculthorpe and pianist Roger Woodward.
A decade later, Tognetti – still firmly at the helm of the ACO – was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for his service to music.
Since then, it has been the promise of a purpose-built home for the ACO that has kept him determinedly Australia-based, a promise that was only delivered in late 2022, after almost two decades of political promises and backtracking.
The concert hall, rehearsal spaces and administration offices at Pier 2/3 at Walsh Bay are what Tognetti calls “our external instrument, our meta instrument” and now the orchestra must fill it with content.
“I’d be kind of nuts to leave now,” he says.
Looking back over 35 years’ worth of programming, Tognetti is proud of how far he has taken both the orchestra and its audience out of its comfort zone.
“There’s no way we could have done Cocteau’s Circle 30 years ago,” he says of one of the highlights of the 2025 anniversary season: a homage to Le Bœuf sur le toit, the legendary cabaret bar of 1920s Paris, which will see the return of British drag, cabaret and opera artist Le Gateau Chocolat to Australia.
“Or make a movie,” he says, of the 2025 return of the 2017 cinematic collaboration Mountain, one of five films the ACO has co-created in an ongoing experimental exploration of music and nature.
Also on the 2025 program: the South African singing cellist Abel Selaocoe who combines his classical training with deep throat singing practised by the Xhosa people; performances of Beach Boys tunes; and a new work by the Australian composer Holly Harrison; and Carolina Eyck, one of the world’s foremost virtuosi of the first – and probably the weirdest – electronic instrument, the theremin.
Even by the ACO’s standards, it is an eclectic and adventurous program.
“But we’ve got a very adventurous audience,” Evans says. “We have what I like to describe as a lean forward audience … they want to learn, they want to be pushed and pulled.
“They’re not all going to love everything … but there’s a level of engagement that is nothing like the Friday night lazy let’s-go-to-a-concert-and-doze-off kind of thing. The bolder we are, the bolder they are.”
This article was amended 28 August. The ACO have 17 core members, as opposed to the 13 listed in an earlier version; that version also numbered the films they have created as three, rather than five.
