Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House February 27, 2015 If someone had told me a couple of years ago I’d be sitting though a double bill of Wozzeck and Beethoven Nine in Sydney, I would probably have said they were a few notes short of a tone row. Last nights season opening gala, however, proved that in the David Robertson era, anything can (and frequently does) happen. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s charismatic Chief Conductor is a dynamo on the podium, a generous colleague and a terrific communicator, but his superpower is programming. By placing the denouement of Alban Berg’s operatic tale about man’s inhumanity to man next to music’s ultimate affirmation of mankind’s ability to transcend its baser instincts, Robertson took us on a musical long night’s journey into day – in the key of D Minor. The concert opened with Bruckner’s motet Christus Factus Est, along with his Locus Iste one of the most beautiful and impassioned of all 19th-century acappella choral works, and here given a clean, clear reading by the excellent Sydney Philharmonia Choirs augmented by the voices of the Sydney Grammar School Choir. No wallowing here, they… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month…

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