Having worked in and around classical music for 15 years, from Fish Fine Music to ABC Classic to Limelight, joining the Sydney Symphony Orchestra earlier this year was a dream come true. I came on board just prior to our return to the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, and the explosion of enthusiasm and energy that event engendered is unlike anything I have ever experienced. Every day I am surrounded by incredible talented people – musicians and non-musicians alike – dedicated to bringing the world’s greatest music to audiences around Sydney, NSW and indeed around the world. 

Simone Young. Photo supplied.

2023 is shaping up to be an extraordinary year for the Orchestra, our first complete season in the Sydney Opera House since 2019, which will see a number of programs finally realised after having been deferred too long, and I am thrilled to be given this opportunity to share some of the concerts I am most looking forward to next year. 

The centrepiece of every Sydney Symphony Orchestra season is, of course, the concerts led by our Chief Conductor Simone Young. After the incredible experience of our performances of Mahler’s Second Symphony that heralded the return to the Sydney Opera House, 2023 begins with Mahler’s First Symphony, the epic ‘Titan’. Anyone who saw or heard our Mahler 2 knows how moving and affecting it is to hear Mahler led by Simone Young, and we are incredibly fortunate to have this internationally-celebrated Mahler interpreter sharing her vision of these grand works. 

Young’s concerts in 2023 are full of colourful, inspirational music that will transport your heart, mind and spirit. From the swashbuckling sweep of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, to William Walton’s lyrical, deeply romantic Cello Concerto performed by one of its greatest champions, beloved English cellist Steven Isserlis, and a Beethoven double bill with the radiant Pastoral Symphony paired with the Fourth Piano Concerto performed by Spanish virtuoso Javier Perianes (“He made the piano sing and glitter with alert, polished brilliance”, wrote the Sydney Morning Herald of his performance of the Third Piano Concerto earlier this year), this is music that will move you profoundly.

Anne-Sophie Mutter. Photo supplied.

Young will also lead the Orchestra in four unique special events next year. There is a program of highlights from Tchaikovsky’s three great ballets – Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty – curated by Young herself, performed as a pure musical experience that reveals all the nuance and beauty of these beloved masterpieces. We celebrate the 80th birthday of Australian composer Ross Edwards with a performance of his gorgeous Oboe Concerto, Bird Spirit Dreaming, written 20 years ago for our Principal Oboe Diana Doherty, paired with a newly commissioned work from Edwards which receives its world premiere in these concerts. Young is joined by the iconic Anne-Sophie Mutter to perform a new violin concerto written for her by the incomparable John Williams, followed by a selection of works for the silver screen that inspired and influenced Williams. And our season concludes with a landmark event anywhere in the world: Simone Young conducting Wagner’s Das Rheingold in concert, with a world-class cast of international and Australian singers, the first in a complete Ring Cycle planned for the next few years – allowing you to appreciate Wagner’s extraordinary epic without the (often highly-questionable) directorial choices that come with a fully-staged production. 

Of course those are just the concerts conducted by Young. In 2023 we are also thrilled to welcome some of the classical world’s brightest stars to the Sydney stage, with Ray Chen, Nicola Benedetti, Stephen Hough, Khatia Buniatishvili and Siobhan Stagg among our featured soloists, and Donald Runnicles, John Wilson, Masaaki Suzuki and Stephen Layton among the extraordinary guest conductors sharing their expertise and vision with us. We are also hugely looking forward to the return of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra for two very special programs, the first featuring Wynton Marsalis’ kaleidoscopic jazz symphony, All Rise, and the second featuring a selection of classic jazz tunes writ large by a full jazz orchestra. Reviewing their 2019 performances for Limelight, Phillip Scott wrote, “This was a special concert, and not the kind of program we hear often. If you get the opportunity to go, grab it!” How exciting that we all get another opportunity to experience this magnificent ensemble. 

Ray Chen. Photo supplied.

Those are just some of the big moments throughout 2023, but the year starts with a bang with Mahler’s First Symphony, and the hits keep on coming with Pictures at an Exhibition and Rhapsody in Blue (performed by the brilliant Australian pianist and polymath Simon Tedeschi) following in quick pursuit. There are even rare forays into the Classical and Baroque eras, with Mozart’s glittering ‘Gran Partita’ Serenade kicking off our Classics in the City series before Stephen Layton, Director of Music at Trinity College Cambridge and one of the world’s finest interpreters of choral music, brings Bach’s masterful Magnificat in D to life just in time for Easter. 

Of course, the other major star of our 2023 Season is the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, which reopened in July 2022 after two and a half years of renovations. If you have not yet heard the Orchestra play in the new hall, you really are missing out on one of the world’s great musical experiences. Even after talking to a number of the people involved in the renewal project for Back in the House, the cover story from Limelight’s July 2022 issue, I admit I was sceptical as to how much could actually be achieved – but the results are nothing short of transformative. Every little nuance, every slight articulation, can now be heard with incredible clarity. I have had the incredible good fortune to attend several concerts this year, sitting everywhere from the third row to the third row from the back, and no matter where I go the experience is equally revealing. 

The Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s 2023 Season is going to be an inspiring, uplifting and thrilling year of performances. I hope to see you at a concert or two!

Tickets for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s 2023 Concert Season are on sale now. Visit the Sydney Symphony Orchestra website for more information.