The MSO’s 2024 season officially got underway on 21 March with a soaring new setting of an Acknowledgment of County, Long Time Living Here, by Deborah Cheetham Fraillon, and concluded with a vigorous and sparkling performance of Gustav Holst’s The Planets orchestral suite.

Earlier in the day, the orchestra also announced that Jaime Martín’s tenure as Chief Conductor has been extended until 2028.

Jaime Martín conducts the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s Opening Night Gala. Photo © Laura Manariti

On stage the orchestra delivered a poised and confident ‘season opener’, but when does a concert – or at least the marketing of it – try to do too much? The evening was billed not only as Jaime conducts The Planets and the Ryman Healthcare Season Opening Gala but also as a Concert for Humanity.

The latter had been anticipated in a marketing email sent by the MSO’s Managing Director the previous December. In it she described an event in which both “Orchestra and its audience will call for the release of all Israeli hostages, and for the protection of the Palestinian and Israeli civilian population.”

That’s quite a lot of (potentially fraught) heavy lifting...