A colourful program and charismatic musical leadership helped the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra celebrate the end of this year’s concert season in style. Markus Stenz, chief conductor of the MSO between 1998 and 2004 returned to the podium, full of his customary enthusiasm and musical ardour, demonstrating yet again his ability to charm both musicians and audiences.

Stenz immediately drew the players into the mystical world of Wagner’s Parsifal, eliciting refined string playing in the Prelude and Transformation Music, melding it well with the appropriately majestic brass chorus and sensitively shaped contributions from the winds, creating an overall transcendent effect.

Maxim Vengerov, Markus Stenz and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Photo © Daniel Aulsebrook

Violinist, Maxim Vengerov featured in a new concerto by Chinese-born, French-based composer, Qigang Chen, entitled La Joie de la souffrance (The Joy of Suffering). The concerto was jointly commissioned by the MSO, Beijing Music Festival, Orchestre National du Capitol de Toulouse, New Jersey Symphony and the Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition. In a brief program note the composer points to the inseparable nature of joy and suffering, of “Yin” and “Yang”; also mentioning that the work is based on a...