In Other People’s Words Hilary McPhee describes the long continuing struggle to establish a publishing culture that nurtures and promotes Australian writers. McPhee knew Australian writers brought unique voices, grounded in the otherness of a strange small society at the end of the world. The struggle was to convince publishers, both here and overseas, that these voices were valuable and that the reading public would take to them if only given the chance. Since 1989, Richard Tognetti, the Artistic Director and Leader of the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO), has been engaged in a similar struggle to cultivate the possibilities of Australian orchestral music.
It is not a path Tognetti expected to take. These days the ACO is celebrated around the world for combining excellence with a fresh voice. Yet the idea that he would find such success with an Australian
group must have seemed far-fetched to Tognetti when he left Sydney in the mid-1980s to study at the Berne Conservatory in Switzerland.
Like many of his contemporaries and predecessors, Richard Tognetti left highly critical of his homeland. ‘I believed Australia was a cultural desert, that there was no audience here, that not much was happening, that the real possibilities were elsewhere,’ he tells me. Nevertheless, Tognetti was surprised at the end of his studies to discover ‘a sleeping affinity with Australia’. His girlfriend (now wife) was here and he decided to give Australia a go, accepting the job of leading and directing the Australian Chamber Orchestra.
Coming home, Tognetti found what he hadn’t been taught before—a tradition of Australian art with a spirit of endeavour, a boldness and freedom that is quite different from a lot of European art. (Think, for instance, of Sidney Nolan, Helen Garner, Percy Grainger and Peter Sculthorpe, and you get a sense of this.) Emboldened, he set out to have some ‘serious fun’, approaching each piece anew, rearranging string quartet and symphony pieces for chamber orchestra, commissioning new pieces from various Australian composers, and pioneering a series of daring collaborations with performers from outside classical music. For Tognetti, this has been no ‘vacuous vision to turn Australia upside down’; rather, it has been a highly disciplined search.
Observing the portraits of Melbourne painter Gabrielle Martin, Kevin Hart wrote:
I am reminded of an old saying amongst poets: ‘Good poets write two poems. Great poets write one poem.’
It is true. My favourite artists do one thing but endlessly contest what they