★★★★½ De Waart delivers Strauss’s superman and a delightful Belgian surprise.

Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
November 25, 2015

Edo de Waart was Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra for 11 years from 1992 and many fond memories of his tenure remain – an era of Germanic heavyweights (Mahler, Strauss, Wagner) but also Australia’s first taste of John Adams, a composer close to the heart of the orchestra’s current chief as well. Now an infrequent visitor to these shores, de Waart was back for a week or so last night with signature Strauss and Wagner, but also a delightful Belgian surprise up his sleeve.

The concert was bookended with the twin preludes to Acts I and III of Lohengrin, a salient reminder of the Dutch maestro’s gifts as an outstanding musical architect and a effortless builder of the kind of orchestral climax favoured by the romantic German greats. From its ethereal beginnings on high strings, de Waart conjured magical tone and seamless line by appearing to do virtually nothing. The build up to the brass chorales, so prophetic of the Prelude to Parsifal still decades away, was absolutely textbook, reminding us that this was Wagner’s first...