Simone Young gives the new Sydney Symphony season a Titan launch

Gustav Mahler is the go-to man when it comes to a big lift-off for Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor Simone Young.

Simone Young conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Mahler's Titan Symphony.

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Gustav Mahler is the go-to man when it comes to a big lift-off for Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor Simone Young.

It was his massive second symphony, appropriately titled The Resurrection, that she used last July to reopen Sydney Opera House’s concert hall after its $150 million refurbishment, and it was the Titan, his first symphony, that was drummed into service for the launch of the SSO’s 2023 season.

As a symphonist Mahler seemed to skip the egg, larva and pupa stages to emerge as a fully formed butterfly with this debut work. His shortest and perhaps most accessible symphony, the Titan is confidence writ large, encompassing in Mahler’s words the whole world itself.

It was in fact eight minutes longer when it was premiered in Budapest in 1889, but Mahler dropped the second movement, Blumine, perhaps feeling that it unbalanced the whole work. Young opened the concert with this gorgeous serenade with the silvery tones of David Elton’s trumpet sounding out the melody.

The SSO established itself as a much admired Mahler orchestra under Vladimir Ashkenazy’s stewardship in 2010 and 2011. Their recorded complete cycle still stands tall among the countless other box sets that have been released over the years.

Young as well is an admired Mahlerian and this was a magnificent performance. Both conductor and players under concertmaster Andrew Haveron were on top form, and the four movements over 55 minutes left Young visibly drained but triumphant as she took curtain call after curtain call.

Berlin-based Australian soprano Siobhan Stagg sang songs by Debussy.

Sharing the bill with Mahler was Claude Debussy whose Ariettes oubliees (Forgotten Songs), six settings of poems by Paul Verlaine, arranged by Australian composer and violist Brett Dean, gave the audience an all too rare chance to see and hear Berlin-based Australian soprano Siobhan Stagg, over here briefly following a series of triumphs in Europe.

Dean was commissioned by Sir Simon Rattle to orchestrate the songs for his wife mezzosoprano Magdelana Kozena and they performed them in the Opera House with the Australian World Orchestra in 2015.

Stagg, who hasn’t appeared at the Concert Hall since 2016 when she appeared with French tenor Roberto Alagna. Since then her European career has gone from strength to strength with the late great German mezzo Christa Ludwig describing her voice as “one of the most beautiful I have ever heard”.

The six songs run the gamut of emotions – from post-coital languor, through despair to a hellish merry-go-round – and listeners were able to hear Stagg’s exceptional evenness of beautiful tone across her whole range.

Dean’s sensitive arrangements of the piano part, calling on Debussy’s tonal palette from the Nocturnes and other orchestra works, should serve to make this a staple part of the repertoire.

The concert is repeated at Sydney Opera House Concert Hall at 8pm on Friday, February 10, and Saturday, February 11.

DETAILS

• CONCERT Sydney Symphony Orchestra: Mahler’s First Symphony

• WHERE Sydney Opera House Concert Hall

• WHEN February 8, 2023