Season Closing Gala

Queensland Symphony Orchestra’s Closing Gala was a musical delight, offering familiar yet beloved works that showcased the prodigious talent of the orchestra. Under Umberto Clerici’s baton, the orchestra, in top form, raced through this selection of classics with brio and verve.

First up was Gioachino Rossini’s Overture to La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie), a work made famous in Stanley Kubrick’s movie A Clockwork Orange (1971). My first brush with it was Johnny Green conducting the 80-piece MGM Studio Orchestra in a 10-minute 1954 short filmed in Cinemascope and played as an overture to their Cinemascope ‘roadshow’ movies. I was blown away by the breadth and excitement of the work.

QSO didn’t have 80 musicians, but with 70, which included six percussion players and two harps, the orchestra was certainly in deluxe mode. The opera’s plot, which involves a servant girl to be executed for stealing a silver spoon, later proved to be the ‘thieving magpie’, has a brilliant aggressive and militaristic intro, a piccolo imitating the magpie’s chirp, and a waltz that gives way to a brass-blistering finale. It was a colorful and rafter-raising opening.

Next up was French impressionist composer Claude Debussy’s renowned La Mer (The Sea), also famous from movies when John Williams used simplified motifs for his score for Jaws (1975). Composed in three movements, the first From Dawn to Noon on the Sea was sweet and lyrical, the second, Play of the Waves was brisk and lively as befitting waves playfully crashing over each other, and the third Dialogue of the Wind and Sea was animated and tumultuous, with outstanding work from the harpists in the second movement.

The final work on the program was the Suite from Die Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose), a collection of waltzes from Richard Strauss’s legendary 1909-10 comic opera. Thought to be adapted by Artur Roszinski in 1944 for the New York Philharmonic, it took us home to Vienna, the waltz capital of the world at the turn of the century. Nights of passion, discordant themes for agitated lovers, and an ecstatic climax, blended beautifully to produce a Hollywood-luscious soundscape.

Standing ovations, bravos, and cheering were the order of the night, as the QSO stood and received their accolades. Even though Covid meant programs had to be reorganized and rescheduled, it was a fitting finale to what has ultimately been wondrous year of music-making.

Peter Pinne