A most auspicious start to Sir Andrew Davis’s anticipated Mahler project.

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

July 24, 2014

A Mahler cycle is always an event, for orchestra, conductor and audience. For an orchestra it’s both a test and a chance to nail its colours to the mast; a conductor gets to put his stamp on the sound as well as to express his thoughts on these complex, emotional works; and audiences get to hear nine of the greatest, most influential essays in the symphonic repertoire. The tension was therefore understandably palpable last night at Hamer Hall for Sir Andrew Davis’s first bite of Mahler’s veritable cherry orchard. That, and the sight of the MSO, conductor and soloist sporting AIDS ribbons out of respect for the many lives tragically lost on route to Melbourne’s current HIV conference meant that you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.

Canadian soprano Erin Wall eased us into proceedings with a radiant account of Richard Strauss’s appropriately valedictory Four Last Songs. She’s a young voice very much on the rise at the moment, with a repertoire encompassing Mozart’s Donna Anna and Arabella at the Met, and it’s a glorious instrument – free and full...