Musica Viva Australia Announces 2025 Program

Musica Viva Australia is thrilled to unveil its 2025 concert program, featuring cutting-edge collaborations, new commissions and world premieres alongside much-loved classics, as it pays homage to the past and look towards the future in its 80th anniversary year. 

In 2025, Australian audiences can expect eight national tours led by some of chamber music’s finest artists, including the world-renowned, Colorado-based Takács Quartet, Polish-Hungarian powerhouse pianist Piotr Anderszewski, and Indigenous singer-songwriter Jess Hitchcock, in a season which promises to create joy, connection, courage, and comfort. 

Musica Viva Australia’s Artistic Director Paul Kildea said, ‘Much has changed in the eight decades since Musica Viva Australia’s founders, Central European refugees Richard Goldner and Walter Dullo, first pulled together an ensemble of displaced musicians to perform Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge by the light of car headlamps. One thing, however, remains constant: a desire to build a community around a deep love of music. 2025 is a year of innovation and tradition, of collaborations between brilliant international artists and their Australian confrères – we are delighted to share it with you.’ 

The season begins in January with The Cage Project at Carriageworks as part of Sydney Festival, touring to Canberra and Melbourne. The show is a three-dimensional, theatrical reimagining of John Cage’s magnum opus for prepared piano, his Sonatas and Interludes of 1948. Devised by Paul Kildea and Australian percussionist, composer, and sound artist and former Musica Viva Australia FutureMaker Matthias Schack-Arnott, The Cage Project features acclaimed French pianist Cédric Tiberghien in an “engagingly playful” (Limelight) grand tableau of Cage’s work. 

In February and March, Melbourne-based Indigenous singer-songwriter Jess Hitchcock joins forces with the award-winning Penny Quartet to present an evening of music through the lens of 11 Australian composers. Each composer has arranged one of Jess’s original songs for voice and string quartet, creating an exquisite song cycle that showcases the next generation of creative voices. 

Crowd-favourites the Signum Saxophone Quartet and Australian opera star Ali McGregor take audiences on an electrifying journey through the mid 20th century in The Hollywood Songbook next May. Returning to Australia for the first time since their 2022 debut tour, the Quartet will perform works by Prokofiev, Bernstein, Eisler, and Arlen, tripping the light fantastic from Berlin to Hollywood and arriving somewhere over the rainbow. 

In June, Northern Lights sees Swedish-Norwegian violinist Johan Dalene make his highly anticipated Australian debut alongside pianist Jennifer Marten-Smith. Dalene brings works imbued with romance and virtuosity, including Ravel’s spectacular Tzigane. Also featured is the world premiere of a new commission by Jack Frerer, the young Australian composer whose Spiral Sequences dazzled audiences in the Esmé Quartet’s 2024 concerts. 

A triumvirate of outstanding Australian performers – early music specialist Erin Helyard, historical clarinettist Nicola Boud, and Associate Principal Cellist with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Simon Cobcroft – explore much-loved chamber works by Beethoven and Mozart in Mozart’s Clarinet in July.  

Musica Viva Australia is delighted to present the Takács Quartet with actor Angie Milliken next August. Now in its 50th year, the Colorado-based Takács Quartet bring their undimmed brilliance to a new commission by Australian composer Cathy Milliken, Angie’s sister, inspired by Bertolt Brecht’s poetry on migration and exile, which resonates with Musica Viva Australia’s origin story in this, its 80th year.

Trio Isimsiz, fellows at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, share their “vital combination of unanimity, musicianship...and vitality” (BBC Radio 3) with Australian audiences in September and October, performing two giants of the piano repertoire by Schubert and Brahms. The trio also present the Australian mainstage premiere of a new work by celebrated Spanish composer Francisco Coll. 

Rounding out the 2025 season in November is Polish-Hungarian pianist Piotr Anderszewski in his first Australian recital tour. The award-winning recitalist plays Schumann’s Bunte Blätter, a collection of memories, portraits, and dreams, alongside works by Schubert and Bach. 

Throughout the year, Musica Viva Australia’s Sydney Morning Masters daytime concert series continues at The Concourse, Chatswood, with performances from the Chroma String Quartet, Japanese koto master Satsuki Odamura and violist Tahlia Petrosian, former Principal Oboist of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Diana Doherty, the Muffat Collective with singer Louis Hurley, and the Alma Moodie String Quartet with pianist Daniel de Borah.