It’s a star-packed issue this month. Editor-at-Large Clive Paget talks to Sydney Symphony Orchestra Chief Conductor Simone Young about the upcoming Sydney premiere of Schoenberg’s mighty Gurrelieder. It’s not only going to be a first for Sydney, Young reveals. “It’s going to be a first for me! I’ve known it from recordings for yonks because it’s a favourite of people who do my kind of repertoire – Mahler, Richard Strauss, Berg – but it calls for such extravagant forces that the opportunity to do it doesn’t arise very often. You need the right kind of hall as well, which we now have in Sydney.”

This month’s cover image features Opera Australia’s 2022 concert version of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda under the baton of conductor Renato Palumbo. Photo © Prudence Upton.

The Icelandic piano star Víkingur Ólafsson is also making his Australian debut in March, as part of his year-long global tour of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. “It’s a little bit like Olympic gymnastics,” says Ólafsson –the most talked-about pianist in the world right now – in an interview with Paget. “You are absolutely exposed in this music...