Chief Conductor Jaime Martín’s first Beethoven cycle with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has drawn to its inevitably emphatic close with a rousing performance of the Ninth in this the 200th anniversary year of its premiere.

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Chief Conductor Jaime Martín. Photo © Laura Manariti

For the first (and only) time in this Beethoven Festival, the concert opened with a work by another composer; the Australian premiere of James MacMillan’s new Concerto for Orchestra, ‘Ghosts’ (it received its world premiere earlier this month in London). 

This was not quite the left-field programming decision it may have appeared. As MacMillan’s own program note informed us, the subtitle is reference to the fact that the score “seems to be haunted by other, earlier, musical spirits and memories”, including of Beethoven’s ‘Ghost’ Trio, Op. 70 No. 1.

As such, the work in turn also conjured music of other notable compositional ‘lyrebirds’, such as neo-classical Igor Stravinsky, or, more latterly, Alfred Schnittke. 

The title also suggests a communion with earlier works, Bartok’s own Concerto for Orchestra from 1943 being the most famous – although there exists a substantial repertoire of works with this...