Nicholas Carter will lead the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra for his fourth and final year as Principal Conductor in 2019 – but he doesn’t see the program as a farewell. “We have already got some weeks in the calendar for 2020 and onwards, so Adelaide will be my home orchestra at least for the foreseeable future. It’s the [Australian orchestra with which] I have the closest relationship and it’s great that it will continue that way,” says Carter, who is the new Chief Conductor of Stadttheater Klagenfurt and Kärntner Sinfonieorchester in Austria.

Nicholas Carter. Photograph supplied

Running the opera company and orchestra in Austria will naturally take a large amount of Carter’s time, and so pinning down dates for his Adelaide concerts is harder – particularly given the venue situation. “The challenge that Adelaide has is that it doesn’t have its own concert hall so we are beholden to whenever the Town Hall is free and whenever the Festival Theatre is free and [the ASO] finds those dates out so late,” says Carter. “In my opera calendar I basically know where I am going to be...