The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra offer a daring start to the season.

Federation Concert Hall
March 6, 2015

When you have an orchestra twice the size of normal, performing works by Wagner and Mahler, you know you’re in for a big night. Teaming up with musicians from the Australian National Academy of Music, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Marko Letonja, launched its 2015 season with a bang.

Australian composer James Ledger’s The Madness and Death of King Ludwig was a daring start to the concert. The contemporary work drew directly from Wagner’s Ring Cycle after its first climax, although, like Wagner, the climax didn’t really feel like it had resolved at all. Ledger hinted at a major chord toward the conclusion, but the satisfaction was stolen from us as he clouded it with tension. The piece ended as enigmatically as it began.

Wagner’s ‘Siegfried’s Rhine Journey’ from Götterdämmerung picked up where the previous piece left off, with a focus on the lower ends of the orchestra. Marko Letonja conducted a smooth Wagner, and the ludicrously long crescendos were well approached. In the middle of the piece, the French horn ran off stage to perform the solo line which calls...