The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra has launched its 2022 season, and an impressive one at that. Entitled “Perpetual Emotion”, the program, which opens on 8 April at Adelaide Town Hall, is certainly one of the country’s bolder efforts. Of course, there are the usual blockbusters – a Beethoven Cycle, Mahler Five, Sibelius Five, Rachmaninov Two etc. – but nearly every concert contains either a new work, an Australian premiere or a rediscovery, with women and living composers well represented.

The mainstream Symphony Series, for example, features works by Grażyna Bacewicz, Samuel Barber, Lili Boulanger, Unsuk Chin, Joe Chindamo, Anna Clyne, Paul Dean, Lisa Illean, Gustav Mahler, Cathy Milliken, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Modest Mussorgsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Sergei Rachmaninov, Maurice Ravel, Ottorino Respighi, Camille Saint-Saëns, Clara Schumann, Dmitri Shostakovich, Jean Sibelius, Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky, Richard Wagner, Ralph Vaughan Williams. For those interested in doing the math, that’s seven women and six living composers out of a total of 24. Not bad at all.

It’s not just a case of lip service or brief token pieces either. We get the whole of Clara Schumann’s excellent Piano Concerto, for example, played by the equally excellent Andrea Lam. And Joe...