The Rite of Spring Opening Gala made for a magical prelude to the Queensland Symphony Orchestra’s spiritually themed 20th-century program for 2025, one that concludes a three-year arc of interconnected programs crafted by QSO’s Chief Conductor Umberto Clerici embracing music and its deep connection to humanity.

This exciting new collaboration with Circa, the pioneering acrobatic circus, was an audacious but masterful move. 

Queensland Symphony Orchestra and Circa perform The Rite of Spring. Photo © Sam Muller

Alison Mitchell’s enchanting flute with resplendent harps thrust the concert hall into a mystical woodland glade with Debussy’s Prélude à l’aprés-midi d’un faune. His 1894 tone poem was described by Bruneau, a contemporary of Debussy, as “one of the most exquisite instrumental fantasies the young French school has produced”. The delicate flute encapsulates the trickster nature of Pan the Faun, with his use of the devilish tritone interval causing dissonance among the delicate chromatic scales. 

Clerici was waltzing with his baton as the dreamscape unfolded with the brass and winds echoing a Wagnerian-styled...