After a surprise storm in Melbourne on Thursday afternoon, the audience at Hamer Hall was ready for an evening of drama. The program unfolded as a kind of musical lineage, each work echoing its compositional forebears while refracting familiar sounds through new, unexpected lenses.

The concert opened with a new work by Andrew Aronowicz, the Cybec Young Composer in Residence. Aronowicz’s writing proved confident and imaginative. The piece, based on Angela Carter’s short story The Erl-King was cinematic and compelling, with interesting explorations of texture used to tell the story of a young soul preyed upon by a forest spirit. Much like the Mahler we would hear later, Aronowicz depicts the sounds of the forest – rustling leaves and excited birds – and borrows from Romantic song, such as Schubert.

The spotlight then shifted to trumpeter Sergei Nakariakov, who performed his own arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme for flugelhorn. Originally composed for cello, the work took on a new character in Nakariakov’s hands. His technical precision and lyrical phrasing brought a vocal quality to the flugelhorn, navigating the intricate variations and partnering with the orchestra in a gentle yet electric dynamic.

Kahchun Wong. Photo © Angie Kremer

Like the pieces either side of it, it takes its inspiration from other genres, though this one is much more Classical, inspired by Mozart, whom Tchaikovsky greatly admired. It was both a cleanser from the wildness and Romanticism of the rest of the program, but it also felt a little flatter as a consequence.

After the interval came the centrepiece of the evening: Symphony No. 1 by Gustav Mahler. The piece is nicknamed Titan, and its immense orchestration was done the utmost justice by the MSO. It takes inspiration from birdsong, folk melodies (including a marvellously dark version of Frère Jacques), and themes from Mahler’s own Songs of a Wayfarer, as well as alluding to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4.

This proved to be the jewel of the evening. The orchestra captured the work’s eclecticism, led by the gloriously expressive Kahchun Wong. Details that can sometimes blur – such as inner string lines and distant horn calls – were given space to register, and the pacing allowed climaxes to feel earned rather than imposed.

The final movement, in particular, unfolded with a sense of controlled momentum, its energy sustained without ever tipping into excess.