It was fitting that Mexican-born Alondra de la Parra, Music Director of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra (QSO), chose to conduct music inspired by the Americas and the New World in this Maestro concert. The choice of pieces was apt and varied, offering a delightful program to both entertain and inspire.

Aaron Copland’s beautifully realised Appalachian Spring, considered by many to be a definitive work of 20th-century American music, centres around a young couple anticipating a pioneer life in the Pennsylvania hills with ‘Spring’ here representing a new beginning, rather than the season.

Alondra de la Parra. Photo © Felix Broede

The opening section depicting dawn breaking was quiet and languid, with shimmering strings giving way to the sun rising from a haunting solo clarinet. This stylised gentle music consisting of long chords was expressively conducted, de la Parra injecting a sense of the sweeping American landscape into the work. The gradual addition of strings, woodwind, horns and percussion, followed by trumpets and trombones, expressed optimism in the upbeat jazz sounds of the Allegro.

This work swings back and forth between a hopeful energy and wistful apprehension, relished by the orchestra with intelligent and well-judged playing,...