So much of our experience of music relies on memory. The return of a theme, melody or key area only resonates when the listener – consciously or unconsciously – remembers its earlier iteration. Ideas of musical memory are at the heart of the Steven Mackey’s Mnemosyne’s Pool, the Australian premiere of which David Robertson and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra gave as part of New World Memories. Robertson has been an advocate of Mackey’s music in Sydney, performing the Australian premiere of the composer’s piano concerto Stumble to Grace with Orli Shaham as soloist in 2012, and the violin concerto Beautiful Passing, with Anthony Marwood in 2015.

Mackey’s Mnemosyne’s Pool, which was first performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Dudamel in 2015, takes its name from the Greek goddess of memory Mnemosyne, who was mother to the nine muses. Her pool was the opposite number to the River Lethe, which allowed those who travelled through the underworld to forget their past lives.

Mackey’s 40-minute epic takes the audience on a different kind of journey, the first movement, Variations, presenting a winding string figure that becomes hazed and distorted through its repetitions, gritty textures, and colourful reworkings of instrumentation. The sound...