The Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s new Symphony Hour concerts kicked off last month with Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. The music for these shorter concerts has so far been works that show off the orchestra’s full gamut of colours in the indulgent acoustic of the Sydney Town Hall. To this end, Parisian impresario Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes of a century ago have proven a rich vein to tap for the SSO, with this second Symphony Hour opening with Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun) composed in 1894 but causing a stir in 1912, the year before the Rite ‘riot’, thanks to Vaslav Nijinsky’s erotic choreography.

Alexander Shelley. Photo © Rémi Thériault

English conductor Alexander Shelley – who greeted Concertmaster Andrew Haveron and Assistant Concertmaster Fiona Ziegler with fist-bumps, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic – led a multi-hued reading of the Debussy, beginning with a luminous flute solo from Joshua Batty amidst harp and misty strings. Here Debussy’s voluptuous music was teasingly restrained, Shelley and the SSO giving a particularly intimate performance.

Shelley brought a similarly restrained sense of mystery and wonder to the main course on...