What better way to open a new orchestral season than with a sunrise? The elemental drone and brassy rays of light that begin Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra – famous for its use in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey – raised the curtain on David Robertson’s final season as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. It’s a season with a number of ‘event’ concerts, and Robertson kicked it off in style.

Strauss based his 1896 tone poem on Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical work of the same name, though with an eye more to its imagery than a serious consideration of its philosophical implications. Robertson drew stunning sweeps from the SSO’s strings in the opening Sunrise section, building the percussion to a roar before the lingering sound of the Sydney Opera House’s organ – played by David Drury – added a liturgical hue to a work that depicts the tensions between nature and humanity. The strings were sumptuous throughout, but a particular highlight was Of Science’s tenebrous fugue that starts in the double basses and creeps up the orchestra – the port wine sound of Todd Gibson-Cornish’s bassoon reflected later in Umberto Clerici’s solo cello lines...