The Swiss-Australian conductor Elena Schwarz has had a bumper few years. At just 33 years old, she has been the inaugural joint Assistant Conductor at the West Australian and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Assistant Conductor at the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and is currently a Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. If that weren’t enough, Schwarz returns to TSO this year as its inaugural Associate Conductor, a prestigious two-year engagement that will see her make her main series debut as well as lead important projects such as recordings, family and education concerts, and elite training programs. So Schwarz’s season-opening gig with WASO for its Favourites concert in February feels not only like a second homecoming but a victory lap as well.

Elena SchwarzElena Schwarz. Photo © Elena Schwarz/Priska Ketterer

“I’m very much looking forward to playing with these musicians again,” she says over the phone from Athens. “It’s the wonderful feeling of returning to a place and group of people you know well, and of course being with an orchestra which is so fantastic. And also to be doing this kind of program featuring local talent – I think...