In his note announcing the 2022 Musica Viva Australia program, Artistic Director Paul Kildea wrote, “Chamber music remains my great love, and in 2022 we are presenting the broadest possible definition of the art form.”

In real terms, that broad definition has yielded seven individual programs including an Antipodean Winterreise, a double serve of the Goldberg Variations and a pan-Mediterranean feast from Avi Avital and Giovanni Sollima. But far from being a useful catch-all for whatever programming flights of fancy might seize him, for Kildea a broad definition of chamber music is essential to safeguarding, and advancing, the artform.

“I feel as though I have a huge responsibility as a curator of an existing repertory that goes back 400 years, 500 years,” Kildea says. “Finding the new and most interesting performers for that repertory – whether they be international, or a combination of international and Australian – is a huge responsibility.”

Kildea’s 2022 program doesn’t have a tagline or all-encompassing marketing slogan, but as we talk through the various programs the themes that emerge are of ideas that reach across cultures, across...