Chief Conductor Umberto Clerici continues the Mahler cycle begun by Alondra de la Parra. His reading of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra last September received a four-and-a-half-star review from Limelight, which called it “triumphant” and took great delight in the orchestra’s “sheer relish” at passing around the opening movement’s terrifying march. Mahler had barely finished working on it when he began sketching out the Seventh Symphony during his summer vacation in the Carinthian mountains. It premiered in Prague as part of the 1908 Diamond Jubilee celebrations for Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph I.

Limelight Editor’s Choice

There’s a reason Mahler’s Symphony No.7 was chosen to open our Maestro season for 2024: it’s an absolute epic! Clocking in at over an hour, this turn-of-the-century masterwork is packed with action. A rollicking first movement holds glimmers of victory between boasting brass and feverish flutes. The centre of the work conjures the dark of night, birds calling from their hiding places – but do sinister figures lurk in the shadows? You’ll hear it all under the baton of our Chief Conductor Umberto Clerici, who lifts this symphony to its tremendously happy ending.