Richard Tognetti studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with Alice Waten and at the Berne Conservatory with Igor Ozim, where he was awarded the Tschumi prize in 1989. In the same year he became Artistic Director and Leader of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and he has developed a keen sensibility for performing music on period, modern and electric instruments with the pioneering spirit of early-music performers in the 1970s. His arrangements of works by, among others, Janácek, Szymanowski, Paganini, Beethoven, Ravel and Satie have served to expand the chamber orchestra repertoire.

Richard Tognetti has directed the ACO and appeared as soloist on nearly twenty international tours, spanning nineteen countries. Concert highlights include the Vienna Musikverein’s International Chamber Orchestra Series, the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, the Concertgebouw Summer Festival, numerous performances at Wigmore Hall as well as the ACO’s debut performances at Carnegie Hall and the Teatro Colòn in Buenos Aires. He has performed at the Salzburg Festival as a guest of Steven Isserlis, and Brahms’s Double Concerto with Pieter Wispelwey and Frans Brüggen. In 1998 he performed the Australian premiere of Ligeti’s Violin Concerto with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

With rock-musician Iva Davies, Richard Tognetti co-wrote and performed on electric violin The Ghost of Time for an international millennium broadcast with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra on 31 December 1999.