Soulful Journeys was the fifth Maestro Concert of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra’s year and offered a wondrous palette of brooding soundscapes from two of the great masters of early impressionist music, Debussy and Dvořák. Subtle and delicate, the music overwhelmingly lulled the audience in the first half, while reaching a climatic and powerful conclusion in the second.

Pablo Ferrández. Photo © Igor Studio

Australian composer Lachlan Skipworth’s tone poem, Spiritus, opened the program. Both lyrical and melodic, the composition is for the most part delicately evocative of the dual alignments that inspired Skipworth – ‘breath’ and ‘breeze’ as well as ‘soul’ and ‘life.’ Beautiful images of light breezes and wind created by violins and harps had a shimmering, eerie quality, the additions of a lone trumpet, cor anglais and solo cello adding depth. Under Daniel Blendulf’s measured and precise baton with some first-rate orchestral playing, a beautiful melange of sounds emerged in a Nocturne evoking imagery of moonlight on water. Gentle percussion rhythms and a chiming celeste quickly gave way to a vision of stormy weather with pizzicato strings, followed by jarring snare drums. The many clashing, contrasting sounds...