DREAMS & STORIES WITH QSO

We all dream. We all tell stories. Composers tell their stories through music. This weekend, the Queensland Symphony Orchestra brought together a collection of old and new music from various parts of the world to tickle our senses and stimulate our imaginations. This dynamic concert presents a fantastic variety of pieces, expertly curated, and maintaining a narrative from start to finish. It went so quickly and left the audience completely elated and refreshed!

Opening with Mendelssohn’s Overture to A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, under the baton of Austrian guest conductor Katharina Wincor, the QSO starts this rich and dynamic program with the beautiful interpretation of the mischievous and magical play by William Shakespeare. Did you know that Felix Mendelssohn wrote this at 16 years of age? The score was subsequently lost, and he re-wrote it again at 23. The host of the show, Ashleigh Denning, provides this and many other curious facts about the pieces performed, relating the human aspect of the composers’ lives to the audiences.

In Australia, we often associate storytelling with our Indigenous artists. William Barton joins the QSO as the leading Australian didgeridoo player, composer and vocalist, opening Kakadu by Peter Sculthorpe (1988) with his own “Call to song.” As he moves past the audience, his voice pierces through the auditorium. When he picks up the didgeridoo and begins to play, the orchestra joins in, and a collision of styles fills the concert hall with the sounds of birds, insects, and the Australian Outback. Moving on to his own composition, Sky Songs, Barton pushes the boundaries of the dialogue between the orchestral instruments and the didgeridoo.

From Australia to Austria, the QSO takes us through the story of the Viennese waltz by Johann Strauss Jr., Tales from the Vienna Woods. When the composition arrives at a well-known melody, we can see the audience stirring in the rhythmic motion of the three-quarter waltz timing. Then, from the famous Strauss to the famous Harry Potter and John Wiliams’s monumental film score. Familiar music helps to create a relationship with the audience, before diving into the modernist world of Igor Stravinsky and the Russian folklore of The Firebird. Pure magic from QSO!