The Overture returns to Chatswood this June as finalists in the 2026 NSW Secondary Schools Concerto Competition perform with orchestra at The Concourse.
By mid-afternoon in Chatswood, the light outside The Concourse usually settles into something even and measured. Families cross the plaza, people drift between cafés, and the rhythm of the precinct moves with familiar ease. Inside the concert hall, however, another pace will take hold.
This Sunday, that shift will arrive quietly at first.
Musicians will tune. Programs will fold open. Audience conversations will soften into the background. Then one by one, six young performers will walk onto the stage carrying not only their instruments but years of disciplined practice, private routines and long hours spent preparing for a few concentrated moments in front of an orchestra.
The Overture will bring together the finalists of the 2026 NSW Secondary Schools Concerto Competition for an afternoon concert that offers something increasingly uncommon: the chance to witness emerging musicians performing substantial concerto repertoire in a formal concert setting, supported by full orchestral accompaniment.
For audiences, the experience will be less about competition and more about watching musicians at a particular point in their creative lives – standing at the edge of possibility.
The Overture And The Experience Of Performance
Competitions often suggest urgency and outcomes, but concerto performance tells a slower story.
Behind every appearance on stage is repetition: scales played before school, rehearsals after class, lessons stretched across years and small improvements accumulated over time. By the time finalists reach this concert, much of the work has already happened.
The Overture will gather those efforts into a single afternoon.
Held at The Concourse Concert Hall in Chatswood, the finals concert will feature six finalists from across New South Wales performing selected concerto movements before an audience and adjudicators, competing for prizes and future performance opportunities.
The format allows each soloist to enter briefly but fully into another musical world.
There will be music shaped by Romantic intensity, moments of lyric restraint and passages that demand confidence well beyond the age of the performers themselves.
Repertoire That Moves Across Generations
Part of what gives The Overture its character is the breadth of music presented in one sitting.
The junior section will include Christina Bhang performing Korngold’s Violin Concerto and Kiara Morishita-Lee presenting Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 2 – works separated by centuries but connected through precision and expression.
The senior finalists will move across an equally expansive landscape.
Jeffrey Dong will perform Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2, while Connie Liu will take on the scale and emotional reach of Sibelius’ Violin Concerto. Leon Spikmans will present Bottesini’s Double Bass Concerto No. 2, bringing one of the orchestra’s larger instruments into solo focus, and Jaemin Yoo will perform Bartók’s Viola Concerto.
For listeners, the afternoon will not require specialist knowledge.
Concerto concerts tend to reveal themselves naturally. Each performance introduces a new sound, a different dynamic between soloist and orchestra and a distinct sense of personality.
The transitions become part of the experience.
The Overture At The Concourse
Concert halls shape attention differently from most public spaces.
Inside The Concourse Concert Hall, details become more noticeable – a bow lifted before the first phrase, pages turning in unison, the brief silence before applause begins.
The Overture will unfold in that environment: focused but accessible, formal without feeling distant.
What emerges in events like this is not simply technical ability. Audiences often remember the atmosphere – the concentration in the room, the collective listening and the sense that each performance exists only once in exactly that form.
For young musicians, concerts like this become markers.
Some may continue into professional careers. Others may carry music into different parts of life. Yet for one afternoon, each performer will occupy the same stage and offer something fully prepared and distinctly personal.
As the final notes settle into the hall and people begin to step back into the afternoon light outside, the memory may remain less as a contest and more as a collection of moments: a sustained phrase, a held breath, the resonance of strings and brass, and the rare feeling of witnessing musicians just as larger stages begin to appear ahead.
Event Details
What: The Overture – 2026 NSW Secondary Schools Concerto Competition Finals Concert
Date: Sunday, 28 June 2026
Time: 3:00pm
Location: The Concourse Concert Hall, Chatswood, Sydney
Bookings: Essential
Official Link: https://www.kpo.org.au/current/home/concerts/106-a-june