Thursday 4 September 2025

Review by Paul Neeson (Arts Wednesday)

More words have been written about Gustav Mahler’s 4th and 5th Symphonies than the number of notes in both works combined. Given that they are scored for around 100 musicians and they both last around an hour, that is a lot of notes. So let’s talk instead about tonight’s musicians, the Australian World Orchestra under the baton of Chief Conductor and Artistic Director, Alexander Briger.

Australian orchestral musicians are over-represented in the major orchestras around the world: the London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Gewandhaus Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Orchestra to name just a few. Now in its 15th year, the AWO once again brings together these amazing musicians from all around the world for what must feel like a school reunion, with just two performances – one in Melbourne followed by one in Sydney. I was fortunate enough to attend the concert in a packed to the rafters Sydney Opera House Concert Hall.

Alexander Briger comes from a dynasty of Australian conductors, his uncle was Sir Charles Mackerras, the first Australian Chief Conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. The AWO is his brainchild and the concept is unique in the world and I’m sure other countries are looking at how they can emulate the model.

It is not often you get two symphonies from the great Bohemian composer in one concert, but we were blessed to have the 4th and 5th, two monumental Late Romantic works. At the outset it felt like we were about to run a musical marathon with a program duration of nearly 3 hours. But the audience was match fit and definitely up to the challenge. In an unprecedented show of support and anticipation the spontaneous applause as the musicians walked onto the stage felt like it was never going to stop. Many in the orchestra were clearly humbled by the boisterous welcome.

Mahlerfest – Mahler 4 & 5 – Australian World Orchestra

The first things that soon became obvious was that Briger was not following a score, but conducting entirely from memory, and that there was no lower brass onstage for the 4th Symphony. While there are many similarities, the two works differ in that the 4th portrays a child-like view of the world (hence the paucity of lower brass), while the 5th also embraces the darker and more dangerous side of our nature. Mahler famously once said “The Symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything.” I asked Maestro Briger if, in this program, these two worlds collide, or are they compatible? You can hear his response in the interview below.

The expertise of the musicians was soon apparent. The exposed unison playing of high harmonics in the strings was perfectly in tune (no easy feat) and the rich variety of tonal colour never ceased to amaze. The 4th in particular is built on motifs (in the style of Richard Wagner) that recur in different guises throughout the work. While the orchestra was expert at highlighting these motifs as they appeared, it was Briger’s genius to segue into and out of them to the flesh of the symphony, creating a seamless musical narrative with gems of familiarity glistening from within the fabric.

And speaking of gem encrusted fabric, soprano Sarah Traubel made a dramatic entrance in a powder blue full length gown just before the final movement. Her presence on stage (heralded by a quasi-fanfare) was dominating as she made eye contact seemingly with every member of the audience. Her voice was clear as an alpine mountain stream as she sang the finale, a child’s view of what heaven must be like. The orchestra fell in step behind her, in awe and admiration of her interpretation. And like all great conductors, Briger was content to follow her lead and keep the orchestra in sync with her. The well-disciplined audience who had shown enormous restraint up till now, unleashed their applause.

After interval they brought out the big brass guns for the 5th: tuba and trombones completed the ranks. There had also been some musical chairs in the strings with the section leaders being substituted by others, all being more than capable of the task.

Mahler is the absolute master of orchestral colour, and in this performance of the 5th there were colours I thought I’d never heard before. He uses devices such as getting the clarinets to raise their bells (“Schalltrichter auf”) producing a more present, driven timbre, or the exquisite use of trills producing flashes of light, or the lush rich layers of sustained notes underlying everything. And Alexander Briger tapped into every subtle colour in his palette to create an ever-changing world of beauty.

And by contrast the famous Adagietto is scored for harp and strings alone. The colour here is purely created by the brilliance of Mahler’s writing. You could see the passion in Briger’s body movement as he extracted every ache of yearning and every moment of pure joy from melody, sustained suspension and the most satisfying of resolutions. The audience let out a collective sigh at the end while almost painfully restraining themselves from applauding.

That came soon enough. Mahler’s Symphonies are often compared to running a marathon. And just as marathon runners collapse to the ground at the end, at the finale of this musical marathon we rose to our feet. The entire concert hall gave a well-deserved standing ovation that went on and on and on. Each section or soloist was singled out for attention. They were all worthy but my standouts were the crisp efficiency of timpanist Antoine Bedewi, the timbral variety of harpist Alice Giles, the clarinet section who were having a ball throughout and of course soprano, Sarah Traubel for her clarity of tone.