With the country hitting its vaccination targets, the return of the Australian World Orchestra next year is yet another sign of a return to more normal times. The crack ex-pat ensemble has today announced concerts in Sydney and Melbourne in August and September 2022 under the baton of superstar conductor and long-term supporter, Maestro Zubin Mehta.

Zubin Mehta conducting the Australian World Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House, 2013. Photo © Mike Pozarik

Mehta is renowned as one of the world’s finest interpreters of the music of Richard Strauss, so it will be a cause for extra excitement that he has chosen to conduct the AWO in three of the composer’s blockbuster tone poems: the flamboyant Don Juan, the jocular Till Eulenspiegels Lustige Streiche and Strauss’s famous self-portrait, Ein Heldenleben. “In truth, I became a conductor because deep down I wanted to conduct Richard Strauss’s tone poems,” says Mehta.

Speaking with Limelight, AWO Artistic Director and Chief Conductor Alexander Briger points out how relatively easy it was to get the now 85-year-old conductor to undertake the long journey back to Australia. “When he...